The Fire and the Rose - Part 2: Moments of Happiness
by wishfultinkering
Summary: Sequel to "The Fire and the Rose". Authors:Abby&Domina.
1. Chapter 1

**Once again, this story isn't mine. I'm only posting it for better readability.**

 **The Fire and the Rose - Part 2: Moments of Happiness** by Abby & Domina

 **December 1st**

Hermione Granger's concentration was broken by a persistent scratching at the window of her office, an abrasive noise that brought the drumming of the winter rain back to the forefront of her conscious mind. Sighing a little, she looked up to see a brown and white speckled post owl clinging precariously to the window ledge, its outline blurred by streaming water and the rapidly failing daylight.

Not that it had been very strong to begin with, she thought wryly, as she reached for her wand and muttered _Lumos_. The ambient light in the room increased a notch and the scraping of the owl's claws became more insistent. Easing out from behind her desk, she went to the window and opened it. The bird flew inside in a squall of wind and water. Hermione hastily closed the window and turned to find that several, very soggy packages had been deposited on top of her papers. The owl, having delivered itself of its burden, hopped to the edge of the desk and flapped its wings, like a very small, very wet dog shaking itself off. A shower of droplets hit Hermione's work and small, pale inkblots began to form on the uppermost parchment. The owl looked at her expectantly.

"After that performance, you still expect me to feed you?" she asked, her irritation only half feigned.

The owl blinked once and didn't move.

"I'll take that as 'yes', then."

Crossing back to her desk, she opened a container full of owl treats and pulled out a handful. The owl blinked again.

"The desk is wet enough already," she pointed out. "If you want these, you're going to have to come back to the window."

The owl obediently took off, overtaking her so that it was perched and ready for her by the time she reached the window. Giving it only enough time to wolf down the scattered treats, she put her hand on the catch and opened the window again, flinching against the weather's fresh onslaught. The owl contrived to look reproachful.

"Out," she ordered it, firmly.

It took flight with as close to a flounce as a bird was capable of.

Hermione shut the window again and wiped the water from her face.

Sighing again, she looked at the mess on her desk. As her train of thought was now well and truly interrupted, she decided that she might as well have a cup of coffee. She wandered over to the fireplace, which, instead of the customary fire, held a cast iron stove. She picked up the coffee pot and tested its weight, judging that there was just about enough left for one more cup. She collected her mug from the desk and poured the remnants of the pot into it. Cradling the rough earthenware, she sipped at the strong black liquid meditatively. The taste for coffee strong enough to caulk timbers was a legacy of her final year at school and was now so firmly established that she had almost forgotten the time when she hadn't drunk it. Almost.

She sat back down, pushing the wet post to one side, and looked resignedly at the essay in front of her. The page which she had been reading was now smeared to indecipherability. For a moment she had contemplated leaving it like that, and ascribing the damage to tears of uncontrollable joy, but the sad truth was that Miss Lucinda Crampington would not appreciate her treatise on the Legality and Morality of Memory Charms being returned to her looking as if it had been used as a dishcloth. Not only was Miss Crampington's prose leaden and her arguments poorly presented, she had absolutely no sense of humour. Shifting her coffee to her other hand, Hermione picked up her wand, pointed at the page and murmured, " _Restoratio_ ". The parchment dried out, the ink splotches faded and the words reformed themselves in a readable form.

Duty done, Hermione abandoned Miss Crampington's rescued words of wisdom in favour of the more interesting owl delivery. She tossed a couple of damp journals to one side for later reading, and concentrated on the two other envelopes. One was large, brown and rectangular and she could see that it was from her mother. The other was long and pink and addressed in an unfamiliar hand. She dried them both off.

She would open the one from her mother first, she decided. It intrigued her; it was too late for a birthday card and too early for Christmas. Opening the envelope, she pulled out a large piece of card with a picture of an angel on it. Not a cute cartoon angel with wings, a halo and a long white nightdress, but a golden, pre-Raphaelite angel with voluminous robes, abundant hair and a seraphic face. Printed across the picture in neat white type and in no apparent order, were the numbers one to twenty five. Each number corresponded to small square perforations in the card.

Hermione turned the card over. Her mother had written on the back:

 _Darling,_

 _I know you haven't had an advent calendar since you were little, but I saw this and I thought of you, especially since your father and I aren't going to be at home this Christmas. I hope this will take your mind off this awful weather._

 _Lots of love_

 _Mum._

Hermione smiled. Only her mother would ever see an angel and think of her. She might wear robes a lot, and she certainly had the hair for it, if the picture was anything to go by, but there the resemblance ended. She turned the card back over and looked for the number one. Finding it by the bottom left hand corner, she picked carefully at the perforations, opening the door to reveal a picture of a star, a small detail from an oil painting. She propped the calendar on her desk.

That just left the mysterious pink envelope. She couldn't begin to speculate as to the sender; of all her correspondents, both regular and intermittent, she could safely say that none of them were the pink envelope sort. For a moment, she wondered if it was a rare owl mis-delivery. But no. It was clearly addressed to her.

 _Miss H. Granger_

 _Senior Lecturer in Magical Ethics_

 _Amergin College_

 _University of Oxford_

There was nothing for it. She was just going to have to open it.

The headed notepaper inside made her blink. And not just because it was an even more violent shade of pink that the envelope.

 _From the desk of Ms Parvati Patil,_

 _Editor-in-chief_

 _Ms Magic Magazine_

 _The Magazine for the Twenty-First Century Witch._

Hermione blinked again.

She had seen Ms Magic Magazine on the shelves next to Witch Weekly and the like, but had always passed swiftly over it. She wasn't quite certain which piece of information her brain was reluctant to fully process; the fact that Parvati Patil was the editor-in-chief or that fact that Parvati Patil and/or Ms Magic Magazine were writing to her. Both seemed equally implausible.

She read on.

 _Darling Hermione!_

Hermione blinked once more. She couldn't help it. Since when had she and Parvati been on "darling" terms?

 _Remember me! Parvati from school! That's silly, of course you remember me! You know I always said I wanted to go into fashion? Well, I did! And now I'm editor-in-chief of Ms Magic Magazine! Isn't that just amazing! Wouldn't McGonagall be surprised if she knew?! And can you imagine what_ _Snape_ _would say?!_

She certainly could. She imagined that something to the effect that Parvati's grasp of punctuation appeared to have come to a standstill at the exclamation mark would come into it. She returned her attention to the letter with a growing mixture of horror and fascination.

 _Well, Hermie darling,_ \- Hermione suppressed a shudder - _the thing is this. I've been thinking for the longest time about how I can make Triple M just the most successful magazine ever, and I was thinking about school and all my old friends and then I had a brilliant idea! Do you remember that utterly_ _amazing_ _stuff you used to make for us at school? The shampoos and creams and conditioners and things? I miss those even now!_

Hermione was beginning not to like the way this was heading.

 _So, my proposition is this. How would you like to make some more of that stuff - in commercial quantities - and we'll market it under the Triple M label. Obviously, we'd pay you something for it - and I'm sure that you could do with a bit extra if you're only on a lecturer's salary!_

Hermione gritted her teeth.

 _Let me know a.s.a.p. if you're interested. I need an answer pretty soon as I want to put a package together to take to my board. I do hope you'll say yes, because I just know they're all going to love the idea!_

 _Hope to hear from you soon._

 _Your friend,_

 _Parvati_

Hermione put the letter down very slowly. It was astonishing, she thought, how Parvati could switch from gushing pseudo-teen speak to a commercial proposition in a few dizzying paragraphs. The deconstruction of the style of the letter gave her mind a few essential moments to comprehend some other aspects of the proposal.

Well, one other aspect of the proposal to be precise.

Severus Snape. And the aftermath of a very strange few months at the beginning of her final year.

They had been ... companions in adversity might be the best term for it. Friends of a sort, perhaps. After "it" was all over they had maintained the expected open hostility in public and avoided any other form of contact. Then Voldemort had finally been defeated and they had progressed to a kind of guarded cordiality. A few letters had been exchanged during her time as a student; requests for information, double checking an argument or a conclusion, never anything more personal. Time passed, the letters dwindled and Hermione, for her part, found herself increasingly reluctant to revisit a situation that ten years of hindsight told her was capable of so many different sensible and logical interpretations. So she corresponded with him about twice a year, drank her coffee strong and black, used a stove not an open fire, and had generally got on with her life. And if there was a hint of regret buried inside, she was wise enough not to dwell on it.

The letter from Parvati changed things somewhat. Not the least because it hadn't actually been she who had founded her small cosmetics empire. Neither had she forgotten that the profits from the enterprise had all been paid into her Gringott's vault. If she just accepted Parvati's proposal - and that was a big if, she reminded herself - she would once again be profiting from Snape's work.

Simple decency required that she put the proposition to him before she responded to Parvati.

She reached across her desk for a clean piece of parchment and a fresh quill. This was going to be an interesting letter to write.

 _Dear Severus,_

She had never returned to "Professor Snape" in their private correspondence.

She chewed the end of her quill in thought.

 _Today I received a ..._

What would be the word for this? Bizarre? Terrifying? Deranged?

She started again.

 _I don't know if you remember Parvati Patil from my class at school, but today I received an unexpected letter from her, which I enclose. I apologise for the colour, but trust that it is self-explanatory._

 _As it was you who actually started making the cosmetics that she refers to, I thought that the offer should be made to you as well. I haven't replied to her yet. Perhaps you would let me know your thoughts on the matter._

 _With best wishes_

 _Hermione._

 **December 2nd**

It was a dark and stormy night - rather like most winter nights at Hogwarts in fact, although the weather had not yet had the decency to turn to snow and at least provide some aesthetic relief with each passing storm front.

Severus Snape ground his teeth as the sound of chattering children echoed through his classroom; the last lesson of the day was over at last and the infants were escaping with barely suppressed relief. None of them stopped to realise that his relief was, at least, equal to theirs. This term seemed to be longer still than most, and there were still two or more weeks until the quiet peace of the holidays would blanket the school.

Snape had been barely restraining himself from counting down the days - but Dumbledore had yesterday given him, and each of the other members of staff, some Muggle contraption which he had called an Advent Calendar. The calendar itself was typical of Dumbledore - garish, emblazoned with the Muggles' Santa Claus on set against a somewhat over-coloured Alpine scene; this particular S. Claus looked suspiciously like a relative of Dumbledore, and Snape half-wondered whether Dumbledore had posed for the picture himself. The headmaster had certainly seemed utterly delighted with the calendars as he had handed them out at the staff meeting, under the guise of 'continuing Muggle education' for the teachers, and cheerfully instructing them on the use of the things. If 'use' was in fact the correct term; Snape was fairly sure it had been a while since he had seen anything quite as useless but, all the same, he had taken a rather vicious delight in tearing off the days, yesterday and today. At the time, he had sneered at the gift.

Sneering was still the expected reaction; any other would probably have caused consternation. Voldemort had gone, the world had righted itself after wobbling rather precariously for a few months, but some things had to stay the same.

If, sometimes, Snape found himself weary of presenting the same persona to the world, he didn't show it. Those who met him thought him unchanged, still the greasy git of student nightmares, unkempt and uncaring. He had endured Dumbledore's insistence on highlighting his contribution to the cause, to Voldemort's downfall and his work with the Order of the Phoenix before that, but nothing could make him actually appear to like it.

Truth was, he didn't much like it. Despite rumours and convictions to the contrary, he didn't want public acknowledgement of his work, his actions - it brought a scrutiny and attention that he was uncomfortable with. Drawing the attention of others had, historically, brought him nothing but grief, literally and metaphorically.

The last echoes of the chatterers in the corridor outside the classroom died away, leaving the stones of the dungeons echoing with silence. Snape breathed deeply, wishing away the tensions of explosive lessons, and surveyed the room. It was clean enough - nothing that the house elves couldn't handle this evening - and he had nothing more that he needed to do here. Collecting the stack of parchments that represented the sixth years' homework, handed in earlier that day, he left the classroom and headed for his rooms.

His bootheels rang against the stone floors, a familiar rhythm. Snape thought he saw Peeves turn around at the end of the corridor at the sound, then turn again and head away. Good. He was in no frame of mind to deal with the irritating pest - not that he was ever in a frame of mind to deal with him. Fortunately, the poltergeist was generally kept in order by Slytherin's resident ghost and rarely ventured into these parts; the occasional foray for daring, but Peeves preferred to stay away on the whole.

Snape reached the sanctuary of his rooms at last. He dropped the pile of parchments onto the table in the corner, picking up the most recent copy of Ars Alchemica in order to make room for the papers. Marking could wait. He had intended to drop the magazine onto another pile - one of the never-ending 'to read' piles scattered through the room - but decided instead that this was as good an opportunity as any to catch up with whatever the academic community had been investigating this month.

Crossing to the hearth, Snape dropped the magazine onto the sofa as he passed. The stove was still hot, stoked by the house elves at some point that afternoon, but he added another couple of small logs to the dwindling fire. Whilst the flames could have been - and usually were - kept alight magically, he liked the scent given off by a real fire. Theoretically, another charm or two could have added the scent to a magical fire but he would still know that it wasn't truly real. Enough of this world seemed to be made up of constructs and illusions, even in peacetime, that Snape took a perverse - and undisclosed - pleasure in concrete reality.

He measured out coffee from a small steel can kept on a shelf in the hearth wall, filling the coffee pot with water and reassembling it. Placing the pot on the stove, he shrugged off his robes and settled into the sofa, stretching his legs out along the cushions as he unbuttoned the long jacket he wore and loosened a couple of buttons on the cuffs.

He was halfway through the second article when the bubbling of the pot changed to a low gurgle as the last of the steam forced its way through the coffee grounds. Snape groaned softly as he forced himself to move, to get up and pour coffee into a stoneware mug. Returning to the sofa he noticed an envelope lying on one of the leather armchairs that also faced the hearth; he had missed the owl call that morning, dealing with various tedious and unimaginative Slytherin rule infractions. Rather than chase Snape around the castle, the owls were directed to leave mail in his rooms when he wasn't in the Hall - the other teachers had similar instructions in place with the owls.

Picking up the envelope, he recognised the handwriting - Hermione Granger. He frowned; it had only been a couple of months or so since her last letter, and these days they rarely corresponded more than twice a year. The envelope was also oddly heavy - certainly heavier than could be accounted for by her usual letter of news.

For a moment he wondered what it was that she was writing to him about, then caught himself.

Pointless speculation - particularly when any questions could be answered by opening the letter.

Snape re-settled himself on the sofa, taking a sip of the scalding black coffee before setting it down on the floor and turning his attention back to the letter.

A sheet of paper, violently pink, made him wince. Surely Hermione hadn't ... no, there was another sheet of parchment, in the more usual off-white that Hermione used, in the envelope as well. He set aside the pink, hoping he wouldn't have to look at it again but knowing better. Hermione wasn't likely to be sending him lurid paper without purpose.

Five minutes later, he picked up his coffee mug again and drained it, then got up from the sofa to refill it. He had been trying not to drink so much coffee - Dumbledore's proddings and Madam Pomfrey's mutterings about caffeine had made some impression on him, although neither the Headmaster nor the mediwitch knew it - but right now, he needed more coffee.

Memories that had been, more or less, suppressed for ten years surged back. In a lifetime of strange experiences, those few months stood out - and, although he did his best to convince himself that it had been a horrific experience, he would never choose to permanently wipe them out. If he wished that there had been some other way to deal with the aftermath, that was something unmentioned, undiscussed. There were only two people with whom he could discuss it, in any case - and Snape knew only too well the likely implications of discussing the situation with Dumbledore, even ten years after the event. Especially ten years after the event.

The pink parchment caught his eye, searing the retina again. Snape suppressed a wince. Parvati Patil had clearly not matured significantly since leaving school. Cosmetics. This time he did wince, and the irony in the fact that the parchment was lying on top of _Ars Alchemica_ was not lost on him. He had no wish to revisit the past.

With no particular hope that his response would be effective, he picked up a quill and blank parchment from the floor near the sofa and began to write.


	2. Chapter 2

**December 3rd**

Dear Hermione,

I would like to be able to say that Miss Patil has faded into the faceless mass of empty headed female students who have passed through the doors of my classroom over the years.

Unfortunately, both she and her companion, Miss Brown, have forever imprinted themselves on my memory by inflicting experiences upon me that, even now, I shudder to remember.

My desire to renew my acquaintance with Miss Patil - especially in a context that validates her particular brand of vacuous inanity - is extremely low.

I fail to see why I should be concerned with what appears to be a somewhat straightforward, if appallingly punctuated, business proposition to yourself. Whether or not you ally yourself commercially with this - publication - must be a matter for you - I was not aware that my thoughts were relevant in any way.

Severus.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Parvati,

What a surprise to hear from you after all this time. I do remember that you wanted to go into fashion. Congratulations on getting what you wanted and congratulations as well on becoming the editor of Ms Magic Magazine. I've seen it on sale just about everywhere I've been.

I don't know what to say to your offer about making those cosmetics again. I'll be honest and say that I haven't really given them much thought since leaving school. I don't get as much free time as a lecturer as people often think, you know.

I know you want an answer as soon as possible, but it's not quite that simple. You probably didn't realise it at the time, but I didn't make them entirely on my own - I had some help from someone else. My partner actually came up with a lot of the ideas for what we made, so I really need to get in touch and see what the position is. I wouldn't feel happy using someone else's work without their permission - I think you must remember me well enough to understand that!

Also I'm out of practice in making that sort of thing now, and if I agree I want to be certain that I've got everything right. Again, I'm sure that doesn't surprise you!

I know you're anxious for a reply, but I really do have to wait to hear from my partner and then I'd like some time to think about it.

How soon do you need a reply?

Yours sincerely,

Hermione Granger.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Severus,

I thought I made myself clear in my last letter - I didn't exactly make those cosmetics alone. In fact, for the majority of the time I didn't make them at all. If I do accept this offer, at the very least I'm going to need to check some of the exact compositions with you. I haven't kept up with making the ones that I don't regularly use, and I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of the recipes.

What I haven't forgotten is that the money you made went into my Gringott's vault, not yours. I don't intend to profit at your expense a second time. I know you'll say that's very Gryffindor of me, but in this case I'll treat that as a compliment.

So, yes, your thoughts are very relevant to this.

Best wishes,

Hermione.

P.S. I'd forgotten that Parvati and Lavender waxed your legs. Was it really that traumatic?

XXXXXXXXXX

Hermione, dearest!

I've just been biting my nails waiting for your reply!

Still the same old Hermie I see! Worrying about getting every little thing just absolutely right and perfect! That's why I just know that this project would go so well with us working together - your attention to detail and my grasp of the bigger picture!

And what's this about a partner? We all thought it was just you, because we all knew how much you liked doing extra work for no reason! Although, I admit you did have the sense to get paid for it that one time! And who is this mysterious partner? Actually, I bet I can guess!

It was Ron and Harry wasn't it?! I'm right aren't I?! After all, they were really the only people you hung about with weren't they? I expect the boys didn't want people to think they were girly - it would have really spoiled their macho Quidditch images to be seen messing about with face creams! It wouldn't have looked that great when they made their applications to be Aurors either!

Well, you can tell them that their secret's safe with me! And if they don't want it to be safe, then we can maybe do something with marketing! Triple M and Harry Potter! It would be amazing!

Don't worry about a thing, Hermie! If you come in on this you can pick your team - and you have my personal guarantee on that! Tell "your partner (!)" that they're welcome aboard and that I just can't wait to get started on this!

Got a board meeting on the fifth, so I really want to have something to show to them. If I don't make the deadline the project may need to be shelved indefinitely, so I'm reaching out to you here, Hermie! Tell me you're in!

Waiting to hear from you!

Parvati.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Hermione,

I am not yet so senile that I have forgotten the small manufacturing enterprise that took place in your final year at school. Still less do I need to be reminded of it twice.

I also refuse to believe that you do not remember every single detail of the processes employed. If this is, in fact, so, then I need to immediately inform Professor McGonagall that her beloved former star pupil has suffered her first recorded memory lapse, thus shattering that lady's unshakeable belief in your academic infallibility. I need not add that imparting these tidings will give me no small amount of personal satisfaction.

If you intend to proceed with this arrangement with Miss Patil - and if you propose to pester me with technical queries - then I suppose that I might be prepared to take on some form of consultancy role. I stress that this is purely to ensure that those parts of the process that were developed by myself are accurately reproduced. I have no intention of becoming the wizarding world's second Gilderoy Lockhart.

For future reference, I would prefer not to enter into any discussion of my personal grooming experiences at the hands of Misses Patil and Brown.

Severus.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Severus,

I'm very happy to hear that, if I decide to go ahead, you're prepared to take on a consultancy role. You'll be even happier to hear that Parvati has promised me that I can "pick my own team" and moreover, that my "partner" is welcome aboard. Mind you, I think I should warn you that she thinks that "partner" is another word for "Harry and Ron". Do you wish me to enlighten her?

I've thought about this quite a bit, and I think that I'd like to accept her offer. I haven't done any serious potion brewing for a while, and it would make a nice change from trying to explain to people why the fact that you can fix it afterwards doesn't make it right to break it in the first place.

What sort of input do you see yourself having in this? I don't think you need worry about becoming the next GL. The first one wasn't exactly a howling success.

Best,

Hermione.

P.S. I didn't enclose Parvati's letter this time. I thought it wasn't fair to the owl to make it carry the extra weight of all those exclamation marks.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Hermione,

Words cannot express my joy at the prospect of being part of any team that involves women's fashions and mistaken identity. Soon we shall be able to conduct a French Farce.

I have been considering my role in this putative project further. If, as seems likely, I shall be called upon to answer frequent questions regarding method and materials it would seem more sensible for me to be fully involved. The most efficient way of achieving this is some kind of joint venture.

Assuming this is acceptable to you, it follows that it will be necessary to disclose my identity to Miss Patil. I refuse to leave it to two Gryffindors to conduct commercial negotiations that will have a direct impact on myself.

I also suggest that we devise a plausible explanation for my involvement in the first place. I suspect that Miss Patil is not ready to hear the truth and I am certainly not ready for her to know it.

I commend you for your concern for owl welfare. My own nerves are grateful to be a collateral beneficiary.

Severus.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Parvati,

I have now heard back from my partner.

You will be happy to know that we are interested in taking part in your project. Perhaps you could suggest a date to meet up and discuss the details.

Yours sincerely,

Hermione

P.S. It's not a big issue, but I don't think that anyone calls me Hermie. I don't really see myself as a "Hermie" sort of person.

XXXXXXXXXX

Darling!

What fabulous news! I can't wait to take this to the board! I don't suppose you have any samples that I could have - just to show them what they're getting! Owl me what you can a.s.a.p! Triple M will pay!

Why don't we meet after the board meeting - say 2.30 p.m. on 5th? My offices? I'd say let's do lunch, but these meetings will run on! You can't imagine how tedious it is sometimes! And they say this job is all about glamour!

I can't tell you how excited I am about this!

See you on 5th! Just come to the front desk and tell them you're there to see me!

Parvati

XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Severus,

Of course it's "acceptable" to me to be involved in a joint venture with you. And thank you for your kind offer of help, both with the manufacture and the commercial negotiations - I know there was a kind offer of help in there somewhere.

I've heard back from Parvati. She wants to meet with us on 5th December at her offices to discuss things. Will that be convenient for you?

I haven't actually told her that my partner is you. I couldn't quite work out a good way of putting it down on paper. So I thought that maybe we could meet up before the meeting and decide what exactly we are going to tell her.

Best wishes,

Hermione

P.S. Naturally, I know that you won't get any pleasure out of the look on Parvati's face when you walk into her office without warning. Let alone any sense of revenge.

 **December 4th**

Snape pushed aside a stack of homework and correspondence on his desk , grimacing at the note from Dumbledore to announce a Staff vs Old Boys Quidditch match shortly before the end of term. A few sheets of paper fluttered to the ground as he moved them. As he picked them up, he recognised Hermione's handwriting - they were his most recent correspondence.

The exchange of letters had been unsettling; in the end he had given in and agreed. It was obvious that Hermione wasn't keen to take no for an answer, and Slytherins were nothing if not pragmatic. It would take longer to convince her that he wouldn't help than it would to simply help her. No matter how loath he was to admit this even to himself, curiosity had also played some part in his decision - not any curiosity to do with Ms Patil, unsurprisingly. The pink paper had told him all he needed to know about how she had developed since leaving school.

No, his curiosity had all to do with Hermione; the handful of letters they had exchanged over the years suggested she had done what most of her classmates were incapable of, and had matured. He had occasionally wondered who the adult Hermione would be, and how they would interact. That - more than anything - had ensured his eventual capitulation. He wondered who he would be, in her presence, now.

He had known from the first letter that he would agree, that she would not take 'no' for an answer at this point, and had worded his letters to ensure that she did not. It would have been uncharacteristic of him to agree too soon though, and Severus Snape was never - almost never - uncharacteristic. It would deprive too many people of their basic security. The sun rose and set; objects were subject to gravity; and he was unpleasant and brusque. It was the natural order of things.

He viewed the forthcoming meeting with Ms Patil with some foreboding; being coerced into things by her was not something he was inclined to repeat too willingly. The last time he had submitted to her entreaties was an event he would rather forget but which was burned into his memory with the force of a reverse-Obliviate: if he could convert the way in which that memory was stored into a charm, he could make a fortune from students cramming knowledge prior to OWLs and NEWTs. Or perhaps not; he thought the memory was almost certainly connected to pain, and it was questionable how much students would be willing to endure for exam results.

Patil hadn't known it was Snape that she was cajoling at the time - still didn't know, for that matter, and there was no way in hell that she was ever going to know. If Hermione hadn't already got a story composed, he would provide her with one to cover the reasons for his involvement. Any story but the truth. He had absolutely no intention of ever letting Parvati Patil become aware of the fact that she had waxed the legs of the dread Potions Professor in her final year at Hogwarts.

The memory was the stuff of nightmares; not the pain particularly - despite what one might imagine, Crucio still outranked it; if not for that, the Death Eaters would have been stonewalled by witches everywhere. It was the sheer ... girlishness of the occasion. There wasn't another word for it, otherwise he would have used it. It had been scant consolation that Hermione was no more enamoured of the "girl's night in", and her doubling up with laughter on realising what he had gone through had been even less consolation. The conversation - for want of a better word - between Lavender Brown and Patil had been excruciating. Boys, more boys, and makeup tips. If it had been his life alone, he would have told them in no uncertain terms who they were dealing with, and hang the bloody consequences. The only reason he had held his tongue was a disinclination to see Hermione become sport for Voldemort; some small measure of respect for Dumbledore's wishes figured in the calculations somewhere, but not particularly highly.

Snape stared out of the window, pulling himself back from memories of a decade ago to stare unseeing into the night sky. Snow had fallen at last in the Highlands, reflecting the near-full moon. The grounds and lake that spread out from the foot of the cliffs which housed the Hogwarts dungeons glittered with the cold, sparkling against the black sky.

Skincare and cosmetics. If that wasn't definitive proof of the existence of irony, Snape wasn't certain what would constitute such proof. Lockhart would be proud of him - if the fool was capable of recollecting anything of his existence.

Snape grimaced - laughter, no matter how scornful, was more than he was prepared to countenance at the moment. He looked down at the table that made up his desk, at the papers scattered across it, wincing at the flash of pink not quite obscured. Somewhere in there... long fingers searched, pushing aside one stack of papers in search of something buried by time and end of term marking.

At last he found what he was looking for; a bundle of parchment an inch thick, covered in the near-illegible scrawled shorthand that he used for his private notes. A pity that the work was incomplete - this would have been the best opportunity he could have been given to release this into the public domain without risk of having his name attached to it.

Not quite skincare, or cosmetics, but still perhaps of interest to Ms Patil. Maybe he could finish it soon... Snape leafed through the notes, checking to see where he had got to with his research, to see whether "finishing it soon" was a remotely realistic idea. The short heading said nothing more than 'Project Hermione' - gross sentimentality, but the notes were almost ten years old in places. He had started work on this as a distraction once he had regained his body: it was something to remember the person he had come to know, and he had intended it as a thank-you, if it had ever been finished. Thank you for returning his body intact and his classes on schedule; for keeping his secrets and for too many other things that he was unwilling to name.

Months of dealing with Muggle mopping-up every four weeks had him searching for a way to deal with the issue that wouldn't offend Hermione's concerns about interrupting her cycle. There was very little research in the wizarding world on the long-term use of potions and charms to stem the flow, as it were. It had taken some time to find Muggle research on the same problems, to determine the problems that had concerned Hermione. None of the side-effects, the consequences, had been anything that couldn't be dealt with by a half-competent mediwitch but, all the same, Snape could see why Hermione might not be entirely convinced about the long-term advisability of such things.

So he had set about devising a potion that would deal with the problem tidily, without the side-effects. But time, and classes, and extracurricular activities involving Voldemort, meant that spare time was something rare for many years and, somehow, now that it was quieter, other things had filled up that spare time without Snape ever remembering to continue the research. Now though - well, he had the time. The Christmas vacation was coming up, and with it something akin to spare time for a while.

Snape glanced at the small tower of books that constituted his 'unread' pile; it could wait. If it was essential, he had already read it. What was in that pile was interesting, but not urgent - and possibly not even interesting, although he wouldn't know until he started to read.

He got up from the table, stretching slightly as muscles protested that he had sat still for too long. He picked up the mug of cold coffee from the desk, together with his notes, and wandered through into the private laboratory housed in his suite of rooms. He left the research propped on a small stand near the long lab table, to remind himself that this was his vacation project. He flicked through the pages again, making a mental note of the supplies he would need to order from Hogsmeade - or Diagon Alley, in some cases - to continue the research. Most of the ingredients he had to hand, and he preferred to work with readily available items wherever possible: it was rather pointless to try and produce something with a mass-market potential that could only be made from the rarest of ingredients. Nonetheless, it was nearly the end of term and stocks inevitably ran low. He added a mental note to check the classroom stocks as well and re-order those at the same time. Students brought a certain amount of potions ingredients with them at the start of term but, nonetheless, the school still needed an adequate supply for classes and for preparations for the infirmary.

Back in his room, Snape glanced at the clock and debated whether to have more coffee. The pot was barely warm on the stove; the fire was dying slowly into glowing embers. He took that as a signal that he should try and get some sleep.

 **December 5th**

The downpour that had greeted the beginning of the month had ceased by the time that Hermione Granger stepped off the London train at Paddington Station. However, the capital was still functioning in a perpetual twilight that suggested that the sun had abandoned the struggle for supremacy that day. At ten o'clock in the morning, the station concourse was bustling with the first of the day's Christmas shoppers, flowing purposefully towards the Underground, occasionally eddying around small outcrops of luggage and waiting travellers.

Hermione extricated herself from the general movement, and stood for a moment, shivering in the wind that whistled through the cavernous space. All the trendy renovation in the world could not disguise the fact that this was, basically, a large marshalling yard, with bookshops and 50 ways to take your coffee.

Of course, she could have spared herself this by apparating directly into the Ministry of Magic, but that hadn't appealed to her. It was too quick, too direct. For this meeting she needed time; time to prepare, to turn the situation over in her mind, looking at all the angles until she was as confident of her theoretical model as she could be.

She had suggested to Snape that they meet prior to the - what? Business meeting? Confrontation? Of course, she and Snape needed to agree the story. But underlying that was a strong desire to adjust to seeing him again in relative privacy. She remembered Parvati all too well - the Patil Emotional Trauma Detection Skills were second to none - and Hermione's initial reaction to Snape did not call for interested spectators.

She briefly considered some further procrastination in the shape of a large latte, and then decided against. Instead, she headed for the main station entrance, intending to walk to the meeting place. Unappealing as the day was, the exercise and quasi-fresh air would settle her nerves.

She hoped.

XXXXXXXXXX

It was, she thought some time later, entirely unreasonable that the wretched man should still be able to generate such ambiguous and, above all, unsettling feelings within her.

The choice of meeting place - a branch of one of London's ubiquitous coffee shops, within easy reach of the offices of Ms Magic Magazine - stemmed from the same impulse that had led her to take the train and avoid the Ministry of Magic. Hermione Granger by no means registered as high on the public radar as Harry Potter or Albus Dumbledore, but her role in the fall of Voldemort was not unknown.

Oxford, of course, was comfortable enough. Academic self-absorption took a remarkably similar form in the Muggle and magical worlds; everything that was not directly relevant to the individual's field of study was simply irrelevant - celebrity included - and she lived her life there in peace and quiet. Outside Oxford, however, there was a better than average chance that she would be recognised. And, it had to be said, there were enough former pupils of Hogwarts out in wizarding society for Severus Snape to be not exactly anonymous either - albeit, perhaps, for a different reason.

If Hermione Granger, heroine, were seen to be meeting with Severus Snape, bastard, and on a school day no less, the rumours would be halfway to Beauxbatons in no time.

Today she didn't feel like ignoring the covert glances and the whispered remarks. She wanted to be unknown. She sipped at her black coffee, espresso topped with hot water in a half-hearted attempt to avoid completely over-caffeinating of her system. She briefly thought about food, but any good effects of the walk from Paddington had long since worn off, and her stomach was too unsettled to eat. So she drank coffee, watched the clock and tried not to wonder if Snape would even bother to turn up.

"Good morning, Miss Granger."

She was expecting it, but still had to bite back a startled yelp. He had come up silently behind her. Same old Snape, she thought. Never one to miss an entrance. And why was she suddenly "Miss Granger"?

"Good morning, Professor Snape," she said without turning, giving his full title a slight ironic edge.

There was a movement of air beside her and Severus Snape moved into her field of vision.

He really was the same old Severus, she realised with a jolt in the pit of her stomach that she chose to call "surprise". Still tall, thin and dishevelled, but wearing his muggle clothes - she could see a black sweater underneath his leather jacket. She knew that it would be cashmere.

"You found it all right then?" she asked, before her brain had time to intervene.

He just looked at her. She pulled a face.

"I know. It was a stupid question."

"Yes," he agreed. "It was."

Definitely the same old Severus. She decided to try for a more intelligent question. Or, at least, a less plainly inane one.

"Would you like a coffee?"

Snape inclined his head slightly, leaving the impression of a half-started formal bow.

"I'll get it."

He stalked away from her, and she turned to ask if he had any muggle money, but caught herself in time. It was highly unlikely that he would have put on the right clothes and then brought the wrong money. She, of all people, knew that attention to detail had kept Snape alive this long. And her pride didn't want to ask two stupid questions in as many minutes.

She watched him move to the counter. She hadn't actually seen Snape in person since the end of Voldemort and the consequential official fallout and she noticed now how his jeans fitted snugly over his hips; he showed no signs of having put on weight over the years. Now, he was studying the variations on a theme of coffee as intently as if they were new and potentially deadly potions ingredients. She could read his concentration, even from here - his shoulders raised slightly, head thrust forward, enhancing his predatory air.

A quick glance away showed that a couple of girls at a nearby table were checking him out as well. Hermione smothered a grin, and debated telling Snape when he returned.

Maybe not, she concluded. Ugly and unkempt as he undoubtedly was by any objective standard, Snape had never truly understood that his air of self-belief and arrogance made him a compelling personality. He would be unlikely to welcome the observation.

And she wasn't certain whether they were still on terms that would let her tease him like that.

No, he would expect her to be focussed and professional. Why would he want to reopen an experience that was purely grounded in situational stress and adolescent hormones? Ten years was a long time. A person could move on a long way in a decade.

Although, the voice at the back of her head pointed out, determined to have its say before being shut down entirely, if Snape had moved on a very long way, one of her other correspondents would surely have told her.

By the time she had decided this, Snape had returned and was settling himself down opposite her. He shrugged his jacket off over the back of the chair, and stared at his coffee with familiar distaste.

"There appears to be nothing for sale here that has a passing acquaintance with a nutrient. I even harbour some reservations about the water."

Despite the comment, Hermione noticed that he had actually bought what looked like a double espresso. He sipped and his scowl deepened.

"Burnt," he said in disgust.

"Yes, well, I didn't say this place was good. I said we would be unlikely to be recognised here."

Snape's expression didn't change, but his silence seemed to concede the point.

Now that they had come to the focussed and businesslike moment, Hermione found herself at a loss to begin. She knew better than to expect any help from Snape - silence was his friend. More, it was his favourite weapon. Which meant that she was taken aback when he spoke.

"I trust that the dreaming spires of Amergin are not so soporific as to distract you from your vocation to teach the wizarding world to use its powers only for good."

His tone strangely nettled her, and a combination of nerves and rather precarious emotional equilibrium made her react.

"There's more to ethics that that," she said, before she realised that he was baiting her. Successfully.

Snape looked amused.

"I see you haven't yet overcome the Gryffindor tendency to speak before you think. It's just as well that I agreed to come to this meeting."

The fact that he had wrongfooted her didn't improve her temper. She examined the tabletop willing her irritation spike to subside. Snape equably continued to drink coffee.

"So," she asked, finally, "what are we going to tell Parvati? I don't think the truth would be a particularly good idea, do you?"

"I think that the truth would be a catastrophically bad idea." Snape paused to think. His face took on a slightly abstracted air. "I seem to remember," he continued slowly, "that I told Mr Potter and Mr Weasley I - you - were doing some kind of extra potions project. Perhaps that was the source of these preparations?"

It was Hermione's turn to look amused. Not to mention sceptical.

"Are you honestly telling me that you would have assigned the study of hair and beauty products as an extracurricular project?"

Snape steepled his fingers. Then he smiled unexpectedly, briefly; his teeth were no worse than they had been ten years ago, although they didn't look much better either.

"You know," he said, "I rather think that I might."

Her disbelief must have been obvious, because his face took on a mocking expression and he leaned back in his chair.

"Think about it objectively," he said in his best classroom manner. "At the beginning of your final year, in my eyes, you were, as you always had been, an irritating little know-it-all."

Interest and the beginnings of analysis had begun to operate now, and Hermione didn't respond to this blatant provocation. Besides, she hadn't missed the ambiguity of the statement.

"Go on," she said neutrally. Something flickered in his eyes and was gone.

"Not only a know-it-all but a worshipper in the cult of pure academia. How you looked down on those who cared nothing for knowledge for its own sake but just learned enough to benefit themselves."

Hermione had already opened her mouth to protest the unfairness of this when she suddenly came up against the memory of an evening in the Gryffindor Common Room and a dismissal of the Weasley twins; they only knew enough to make their tricks - nothing important. She shut her mouth again. Snape waited a moment and added, "remember we are discussing my hypothetical point of view."

Was that an apology?

Before she could deconstruct the sentence he had moved on.

"If you had approached me with a view to undertaking a potions project, no doubt anticipating some technically advanced and complex work, and someone, say the headmaster, had forced me to agree to your request ..."

She suddenly saw where he was heading.

"... you would have given me a project on beauty products, knowing that I would think it beneath me, but I couldn't back down after having made such a fuss. And especially not being a Gryffindor."

"Precisely."

It really was good, she had to admit that. Snape was evidently waiting for her reaction.

"It's very _Slytherin_ ," she said, dryly.

He looked smug.

She thought for a moment.

"So, in revenge, I began selling the products?"

"I would imagine so."

"Weren't you angry?"

"I didn't find out until after you had left. None of my Slytherins would admit to having dealings with you and I pay no attention to other houses."

Hermione was now beginning to enjoy this.

"And when you did find out?"

"I sent you a letter threatening to sue you if you tried to make any more profit out of my work."

"Because, of course, the work of the student belongs to the teacher."

"Of course."

"That's not fair."

"I'm not a fair person."

"So when Parvati's offer came in I was forced to write to you because I'm living in penury and desperately need the money. I didn't tell her everything at first because I was ashamed of having been so shamelessly exploited."

"Indeed."

"She'll swallow every word."

"Good."

There was another silence as Hermione ran through the scenario in her head, checking for logical flaws. As she did so, Snape's opening comments came back to her.

"Severus," she said, staring into her empty mug. "Was I really that bad as a teenager?"

She was expecting a caustic answer, but instead he looked away and then stood up abruptly.

"Isn't it time we got this meeting over and done with?"

Hermione stifled a sigh. That was almost certainly a 'yes'. Yet, it had seemed like understanding was flowing between them just like - no, not like anything.

Pulling on her own coat, she followed Snape out of the coffee shop.


	3. Chapter 3

**December 6th**

"Darling!"

Snape was sure he could hear the exclamation points as Ms Patil squealed when Hermione entered the room ahead of him.

So far, he was regretting the expresso he had drunk on meeting Hermione earlier - or, at least, wished he had had the foresight to order it decaffeinated. A heightened state of senses was, emphatically, not the right state in which to enter Ms Patil's current domain.

The place was pink. Very, very, pink. If someone had deliberately set out to create the complete opposite to the Hogwarts' dungeons, this would be the result; it was not out of the question that such had been the intent, of course. The offices of Ms Magic were covered in every imaginable shade of pink, and then a few more shades that Snape was fairly certain he would never have imagined. Everything was pink and soft - cushioned, even to the walls. He wondered whether the effect was the result of charms, or whether some hapless fool had been employed to decorate it in this way.

The exception to the rule of pink was the staff; they all appeared to wear unrelieved black. That should have made Snape feel considerably more comfortable, but it was a style of black dressing that he had no real acquaintance with. In general it was over-tailored or under-endowed with fabric - he tried not to wince at the particularly short robes worn by a woman who, frankly, had no business exposing such legs to the rest of the population. At least, not without a warning. Pallid and pasty, as only English legs could be. She could at least have tried a tanning charm, thought Snape idly, trying to distract himself from the moment. Possibly even a toning charm.

Whoever she was, she of the ill-advised robes, she had been a Hogwarts pupil. Hufflepuff, he thought, although he couldn't recall her - but she clearly remembered him, watching him with horror and fear. It frankly amused him - and it was a quick way to tell which of the staff were English, for they all mirrored her expression. The others simply stared at him - the room had gone quiet when he walked in. No doubt all wondering what their worst nightmare was doing, walking into their office.

He followed Hermione, and the exclamation points, into the small room that served as the editor's office. Closing the door, he heard a babble of noise break out behind him. No doubt the Hogwarts alumni were enlightening the rest of the staff as to precisely who, and what, he was. Wildly exaggerated, of course.

The silence had passed into this room now; Ms Patil was staring at him, open-mouthed, clearly caught entirely speechless - she had obviously been expecting the wunderkind to follow Hermione.

A vision in pink, just as her staff wore black, and with an over-made up face, she was still recognizably the disinterested dunderhead he had taught for seven years. Unfortunately, she regained her voice all too rapidly.

"Hermione? Why is Professor Snape with you?" The exclamation points had been replaced by question marks.

XXXXXXXXX

A few explanations later the exclamation points were beginning to edge their way back into the conversation. As Hermione had predicted, Ms Patil had swallowed their concocted reason for Snape's presence without comment or question - for some reason, once she had established that he wasn't there to present any kind of impediment to the Ms Magic skincare range that she was clearly determined to have made, she simply ignored him and addressed Hermione.

"Right," she announced after a while, dismissing the explanations once they had established that work would commence. She paced the room, with a DictoQuill scribbling on a parchment on her desk as she spoke. Snape found it interesting that she felt the need to record every conversation so minutely.

"I need haircare products - shampoo, conditioner, mask, oils - for four basic hair types," she said, rapidly, her rate of conversation speeding back up now that she had regained her equilibrium. She still shot the odd, nervous, glance at Snape but on the whole had apparently decided to ignore him as a necessary evil. Not much different from her attitude in class, as he recalled. "We'll need dry, normal, oily and dandruff; we need to be able to claim that it's comprehensive. Also facial products - cleanser, toner, face mask, moisturiser, intensive moisturiser. Dry, normal and oily skin, plus combination skin products."

"Would you prefer a foaming cleanser or a milk type?"

Snape almost smiled at Hermione's bitten-off acid tone; the list of requirements had been rattled off almost without breath and certainly without any pretence at social niceties. Ms Patil knew what she wanted, and she was obviously not inclined to pretty up the demands; he rather thought that she believed that Hermione's supposed poverty was enough to compel her acquiescence.

"Both," came the short reply in the middle of his musings. "And I'll need the prototypes for the board meeting just before Christmas. There won't be any problem with that, will there?" If ever a question had expected the answer no, this was it. "I can let you have a small advance on the fee for ingredients for testing - in fact, I'll set up an account at the apothecary in Diagon Alley for you. Just get whatever you need from there."

Snape eyed Patil; back-tracking on the advance was interesting. Did she not trust Hermione with the money? She had grown into a peculiar woman, in many ways: for all that she covered herself and her surroundings in pink, she was anything but the embodiment of that colour. Determined to have her own way, careless of others. Maybe not so different from the Hogwarts pupil after all. There was also something in her tone of voice as she handed them on the prototype date; she was worried about something and Snape wondered just how important this project was to her. And what capital he could make out of that importance. Details together added up to an insecurity that could be exploited - recording the conversation, the somewhat bullying tone, and the unwillingness to trust. It was ... interesting; it was also definitely at odds with the pink fluffy image that she painstakingly created.

Patil busied herself behind her desk, shuffling papers importantly and reaching for Floo powder, presumably to catch up on calls to other hapless individuals.

"I'll need samples of each, with the recipes. Oh, and we'll need lip balm, eye cream, and two types of hand cream - for normal and dry skin," she added as an afterthought.

"The rights to the recipes will not be available, unless you choose to pay an additional fee for those. You can have a licence only. The ... lip balm and so on will have to wait. It will take all the available time simply to reproduce the products you initially requested." Snape thought that, against his better wishes, he should bring himself into the rather one-way conversation. The range of products she had mentioned would take quite enough time to deal with and, besides, he had no potions recipes immediately available to deal with these new requests.

Whilst the concoctions would hardly tax his abilities, or Hermione's, he had had quite enough of Patil's steamroller mentality. He was also unimpressed by the idea that they should simply turn over the recipes for the rather meagre amount discussed; never mind that there was nothing particularly secret or unusual in the ingredients or processes. Besides, he disliked the concept of someone having things all their own way, particularly when that someone was a rather foolish young woman. Hermione seemed oddly silent and, as he risked a quick look at her, it was hard to tell whether she was smothering fury or laughter.

"We will also not be able to produce the products in commercial quantities, as you originally requested. We both have other things to do with our time. You can have prototypes and recipes, but no more." Other things to do - that was putting it mildly. Cleaning the laboratory with a toothbrush. Re-alphabetising the library. Anything but churn out cosmetics.

Ms Patil blinked at him, and Snape thought again that she had managed to tune him out of the meeting entirely. His interruption to her monologue was obviously not particularly welcome. She stared briefly at him, then shrugged.

"Fine, we'll make arrangements for bulk reproduction. Right, that should be it. I'll hand you over to my assistant, she'll show you around the offices." Hell, did they have to? Snape winced inwardly at the thought of more pink. "She'll show you the mock-ups we done for the packaging as well. Let me know if you want anything changed." And I'll make sure nothing is altered, added Snape to himself.

 **December 7th**

Hermione watched Severus Snape as he sniffed suspiciously at the contents of his glass. He gave an experimental poke with the decorated plastic stirrer, thoughtfully supplied by the bartender. Crushed ice slid melodically against glass. He withdrew the stirrer from the mix and the small pieces of green plant floating on the surface of the concoction drifted to a slow standstill.

"Remind me again exactly what this is," he said.

"It's a mint julep."

Hermione, having no need of any form of prior analysis, was two thirds of the way down her own glass.

"And why exactly do I wish to add sugar and flavouring to an otherwise perfectly acceptable bourbon?"

The immediate answer was, of course, because it tasted good. The intermediate answer - the OWL level response, if you will - was that some experiences were just better when viewed through specific chemical filters.

On the whole, Parvati had dealt better with the concept of Snape than might have been expected, insofar as you could call simply refusing to admit the existence of a fact "dealing with it". In fact, she had always been able to dismiss any information she preferred the world not to contain; the need to study for examinations, for example. Add to that a tendency to single-mindedly pursue an objective, be it a boyfriend or a new set of robes and ten years of fashion journalism, and you had fluffy pinkness distilled into a form of direct ruthlessness that was slightly disturbing.

Although Pavarti's instinctive startle reaction to Snape's abrupt intrusion into her slightly panicked stream of consciousness had proved to be an unexpectedly sharp accent in an otherwise monorose afternoon.

All in all, Hermione had found the whole day more than a little disorientating and somehow, a return to Oxford to mull over things in her own rooms, had not seemed nearly as appealing as a drink and maybe supper in London. She hadn't quite laid out the entire scheme to Snape himself, but he was oddly unresisting as she pulled him into the Wine Bar, as typical of its kind as the earlier coffee shop had been.

This one was all dark wood floors and polished brass fittings and heaving with the pre-theatre crowd, catching a cocktail before heading off to the next West End sensation, recounting anecdotes in voices calculated to be just penetrating enough to reach the nearby tables.

Under ordinary circumstances Snape would have said something cutting a long time ago. Then again, under ordinary circumstances she would not have been sitting in a wine bar watching him silently subject a harmless cocktail to the sort of treatment she associated with one of Neville Longbottom's more avant-garde potion attempts. The lack of open contempt for their surroundings was one more disconcerting thing in a disconcerting day.

"It won't hurt you," she ventured, wondering if humour would lighten the subtle tension.

"I beg your pardon?"

That was odd. Since when had Severus Snape been absent minded?

"The drink," she amplified. "It won't hurt you."

He scowled at her.

"This place is not sufficiently interesting to be dangerous."

That was better. Relief made her smile slightly, and brought a nagging sense that if she were going to prolong their meeting she had better raise the subject now.

"Are you going back to Hogwarts tonight?"

He looked somewhat surprised at the question.

"Of course. The classroom cannot spare me for an indefinite length of time."

Hermione took a deep breath and concentrated on making her tone as casual as possible.

"I don't suppose you'd be interested in getting something to eat before you go back. I know a nice little place round the corner that might be able to fit us in."

He put the glass down slowly. Damn, she thought, he's going to refuse. Of course, he just wants to be away from this as soon as possible. For a moment she thought he wasn't even going to answer, but then he shrugged carelessly.

"I suppose there are some practical details that need to be worked out and now would be as convenient a time as any to do that. And as Ms Patil's empire building has undoubtedly caused me to miss dinner, it will save me getting something upon my return."

The response was grudging in a way that only Snape could achieve, but Hermione remembered enough of him to know that if he had truly objected he would simply have said no and left.

"Well, we can go as soon as you've finished your drink."

XXXXXXXXXX

Both the noise and population levels of the restaurant were significantly lower than in the wine bar. Snape had, in the end, never progressed beyond a small sip of his julep, pronouncing it far too sweet and an insult to a good bourbon. Hermione had finished hers and her nerves, if not settled, were at least mildly sedated for the time being. The dining area was arranged into small rooms, none with more than a handful of tables, giving an intimate air. Although it, too, was busy with early diners, a table had somehow materialised, with an ease that made Hermione suspect that the maitre d' had some magical blood in her background. An infinitesimal relaxation in the set of Snape's shoulders told Hermione that he was much happier in this setting and he had unbent far enough to order a bottle of a decent white wine, which he was now sipping as an accompaniment to his mushroom risotto.

She sliced into a delicately cooked scallop.

"So," she tried, "how are you?"

Small talk was not one of Snape's strengths, but to simply launch into a work plan seemed curiously out of keeping with the surroundings.

"I still teach at Hogwarts," he answered, as if that covered everything, which in a way it probably did.

She couldn't think of a follow-up that didn't strike her as too personal. Which was ironic when she thought about it; there had been a time when nothing had been 'too personal', when everything had been open, naked. Which was probably why she shied away from anything that smacked of that now; why she didn't want to do or say anything that could be seen as presuming on their past association.

She took a sip of wine; it was dry, with a hint of apples. A good choice and she told him so. Conversation about the wine was followed by some bland enquiries after old staff members and equally perfunctory questions concerning the health of her old friends. Snape seemed as relieved as she was when the main course arrived giving them a legitimate excuse for their concentration to be elsewhere.

There was only so much arrangement of her food and plates that could be done, before Hermione had to look up, if only to transfer some vegetables to her plate. As she did so Snape was neatly attacking his skate wing, deftly running the knife between the cartilage and the flesh, lifting the sweet flesh with the flat of the blade and transferring it to his fork. Another jolt of memory hit her; the strong careful hands, skinning and slicing all manner of strange ingredients; competent and confident, muscles knowing the actions so well that sight was almost superfluous. And the odd sensation that she could nearly feel the movements, knew how the knife would rest on the joint of his finger, knew how much pressure would be needed to cut just deep enough...

She pulled her attention back to her own dinner, and took another sip of wine to moisten a mouth gone suddenly dry.

"So," she said, with forced brightness, trying to shake off that eerie _doubled_ feeling, "how are we going produce Pavarti's shopping list then? Owl post? Regular conferences by Floo? She does seem to be very anxious to get everything sorted out."

She wondered what Snape had made of the new Pavarti - she would reserve judgment on any question of "improved" for the moment. Her thoughts were temporarily diverted and she had drawn breath to ask his opinion, when he spoke across her, answering her initial query.

"We will first need to assemble all that remains of the notes of that period - I presume that you have kept adequate notes?"

That was a nasty question. The initial notes had been Snape's, and he had left them in her rooms after - well, just after. She still had them, bundled with a very grubby copy of Hogwarts: A History; she had had no real expectation of needing either again, but they were part of her past that she couldn't bring herself to part with. But would he have expected her to keep them, as a scholar might, or would he expect her to have disposed of them as things from childhood no longer needed?

"I still have some of them," she temporised. Snape's expression was unreadable.

"Then we first need to establish exactly what we _do_ have. Then I suppose we need to devise some base preparations and work out how they are to be modified to each specification. Then a working plan needs to be formulated."

"This is going to take some time," Hermione mused.

"Then I suggest you lose no time in getting started," he replied. "If Miss Patil is correct, and she needs this to be ready before Christmas, then you appear to have your work cut out."

 _She_ would have her work cut out? All thoughts of deconstructing Pavarti's behaviour left her mind.

"I thought you were going to be helping me?"

He gave her a supercilious look. She was bizarrely relieved that he hadn't lost the ability to make her want to hit him.

"I have teaching commitments for another week. You, I apprehend, have already begun the somewhat longer vacation enjoyed by those in higher education. Therefore, it is inevitable that this task will lie with you."

She gritted her teeth.

"Well, I'm going to have to be in fairly close contact with you if I have to collate all the notes and then make up a plan. To make a plan I have to know what you are, and aren't, willing to do."

He arched an eyebrow.

"How would you define 'fairly close contact', Hermione?"

Damn it, was he referring to the last time they were in 'fairly close contact'? Was he making fun of that? Could he be taking part in this simply to exact some kind of obscure revenge over what happened in her final year? The thought made her throat go taut with fury and unwanted tears pricked at her eyes.

 _If you want me to back down over this Professor Snape, then you have a surprise coming._

She drew a controlled, careful breath, met his gaze and aimed for her sweetest tone.

"I would have said daily, Severus."

"Daily?"

"At least."

"I have full teaching responsibilities until the end of term. I cannot guarantee to answer owls or be available reliably on the Floo until then."

 _Really?_

"Well, I'm going to need at least that much input from you, if I'm to guarantee accurate reproduction of your work", she stressed the last part, "so if you can't manage that, perhaps you would be kind enough to explain to Parvati that we can't do it after all?"

His face clouded, and she knew she'd scored some kind of point.

"The only answer to this dilemma that I can see is for you to come to Hogwarts, so that we can work together directly. If that is unacceptable to you, then perhaps you should be the one to break the news to Ms Patil."

That was clearly a challenge.

"Unacceptable?" she managed. "How could you think that, Severus? It would be a pleasure to come back to the school. Given that I've ceased teaching for Christmas, as you say, I could be there tomorrow. Would that be too soon?"

To her surprise, he looked away.

"I'll tell the headmaster and the house elves when I get back tonight. Should I pass on any special request?"

The sudden seeming withdrawal shook her a little, and she shook her head.

"No, nothing special," she said in a more natural tone. "I'll aim to arrive tomorrow evening, about dinnertime. If there's a problem, owl me."

A curt nod of the head was her only reply.

Hermione was uncomfortably aware that the business proposition had somehow turned into a personal issue between them; a series of escalating dares almost.

She was pleased to be going back to Hogwarts, of course she was; Christmas had always been her favourite time of year at the school. But she couldn't help wishing that the invitation had been able to be more openly offered and accepted. Stifling a sigh, she continued eating her meal.

 **December 8th**

The wind still bit through Hogsmeade station, and through the clothes of anyone foolish enough to stand on the platform; Snape wondered, not for the first time, why he had decided to come down to meet the train this evening. Certainly Hermione wouldn't be expecting him to do so, and the weather was miserable enough to discourage any such actions. The carriages, and the thestrals, were on hand to ferry passengers to the school when necessary, so he could not claim that his presence was necessary even to avoid Hermione having to walk alone up to school this evening.

Thankfully for his sanity, though, Snape could legitimately claim that he had needed a walk this evening and that this was as reasonable a destination as any. The third-years were being rather more than usually idiotic with the onset of the Christmas season and this afternoon's class had made more than the habitual level of errors; he had spent a not inconsiderable time simply fire-fighting. Literally. Once the lesson was over, and the addle-pated generation dispatched, he had followed them out of the classroom and then taken himself on out into the school grounds. On evenings like this, a walk around the lake was his usual method of de-stressing, but the squid had recently taken to playing games - another one infected by Christmas, if such a thing was possible - and Snape was not inclined to receive another dunking. The first had been uncomfortable, not to mention embarrassing. December was not a reasonable month in which to have to be subjected to such things - although, he thought idly, watching a railway light turn red, there really was no month in which it would be reasonable.

A light in the distance grew brighter; the train was a half-mile or so away down the track and pulling closer. A minute or so later, steam billowed across the platform and enveloped Snape; he stepped forward a little to avoid the cloud and waited as shapes and forms descended from the train. A surprising number of people left at the station; Snape's unspoken curiosity was answered by the parcels they carried. Diagon Alley had undoubtedly made some profits today.

Hermione was one of the last to alight from the train; she carried no parcels and only one small bag - the benefits, no doubt, of perfection of the Reductio spell. Snape moved forwards again, to intercept her, as she walked towards the exit.

"Hermione? Miss Granger-" he corrected himself rapidly. She turned, startled by his voice.

"Professor?"

He hurried on before she could ask what he was doing. "I had ... business in Hogsmeade this afternoon, Miss Granger. This seemed the quickest route back to school in time for dinner. Shall we go?"

Hermione nodded. "Good evening, Professor," she added to the nod, and followed him as he swept through the station hall into the roadway outside. One carriage waited still, and they climbed into it, arranging themselves on opposite sides.

The ride back to Hogwarts was quite; a stilted attempt at conversation had died almost before it began. Snape thought Hermione seemed tired, and knew that he definitely was tired. Too tired to make silly small talk - he would never be so inclined, in fact, and rather wondered why it was even crossing his mind now - he settled himself into his seat and concentrated instead on a particular problem he had encountered in some research a short while ago.

A short while later he realised, with a start, that they had arrived at the school. Hermione had cleared her throat to get his attention - perhaps more than once, by the odd expression on her face - and opened the door onto the steps leading up into the school. He gestured for her to proceed him, and followed her down from the carriage and then, a step behind, up into the school entrance.

His earlier thought that she looked tired was confirmed by her hastily-covered yawn and a slightly gravelled request for the location of her rooms. "Up all night, Miss Granger?" he drawled, baiting her slightly. If she had been up all night, he would lay odds that she had been working rather than carousing, but she was being entirely too quiet. A little prod to the ego would not go amiss, particularly if she planned to attend dinner this evening.

He got a baleful glare, but no more, for his trouble; he was about to point her in the direction of Gryffindor's guest quarters when McGonagall saved him the words. He wondered afterwards what it was that had taken her so long to arrive and rescue her former protégée from his clutches. Hermione smothered another yawn before they had rounded the corner of the corridor.

Later, under the storm-laden night sky of the dining hall, Snape scowled at his plate; the stew and vegetables were unexceptional, the din from the students was unearthly and his dinner companion was unbearable. Unfortunately, the man had done the unthinkable and survived more than one year as a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher; Snape had been hoping with more vigour than usual that Peregine Queroz would be dispatched from the post as all the others had been, either by fate or by design.

The man was everything that Snape was not, that Snape tried very assiduously not to be. And, at the moment, he was apparently entirely taken up with Hermione - not that she was sitting near them; it was far too early in her visit for McGonagall to have relinquished her company, and she was sitting between Minerva and Dumbledore, clearly catching up with the gossip and news, if the liveliness of the conversation that he could not quite hear was any guide. Queroz was not even trying to hide the fact that he was attempting to listen in on the conversation; it was scant consolation that he had not yet asked Snape for any information about Hermione - he had, instead, got what little he could from Madam Hooch. Snape had had to cough once or twice, to disguise amusement at the terse replies she had given - Hermione's prowess at Quidditch was not quite the stuff of legend. Queroz had turned, with a quizzical look, after one cough. Snape had glared back at him; he had taken too much time and effort to discourage the conversation of the man to attract it now. Thereafter, he kept his amusement to himself, beyond even a cough.

As Hermione rose to leave the table - earlier than usual, she was definitely tired - Queroz rose as well and subtly moved to intercept her; Snape could not hear the words, but the intent was unmistakable. Hermione smiled at the conversation, and Snape's perpetual scowl deepened; she was here to work, not to be distracted by the local idiot. On cue, Hagrid entered the hall and Hermione tore herself away from Queroz to greet him. Uncertain which was the worse option, Snape stole away from the table quietly, leaving by the small door behind High Table which led away from the noise and confusion and into the quietly damp corridors of the dungeons.

Next morning, a brilliantly lit day with the low winter sun tinting the Highlands heather golden, a pot of coffee was gurgling quietly on the stove in Snape's rooms when a double rap on the door disturbed the peace. He recognised the knock, for all that he had not heard it in a decade, and not on that door. Reluctant simply to call for her to enter, he crossed the room, dodging a stack of books balanced rather precariously near an armchair, and opened the heavy oak door.

Hermione stood in the corridor, clutching a dog-eared pile of papers and looking oddly nervous. "Miss Granger," he said by way of greeting, holding the door open to admit her. She walked through the door, looking around the room, a strange expression on her face. Snape supposed he would look much the same if he were to be invited to the Head Girl's room - an extremely unlikely event. He waved Hermione to a seat by the fire; she settled down, dropping the papers on to the floor beside her.

"Coffee?" he enquired. She nodded; he recalled, without wanting to recall, that she was no more communicative before caffeine than he was. He handed her a mug full of coffee; she took it and turned the mug around, apparently re-familiarising herself with it before taking a sip. As the steam drifted upwards, she closed her eyes and smiled.

When she opened her eyes and looked at him, the smile disappeared and she sighed gently. Not, despite everything, a response he enjoyed creating.

Hermione reached for the papers and held them out to him as she settled the mug on the arm of the chair, precariously balanced.

"These are the recipes I have," she said, ticking them off on her fingers as she launched into the conversation. "A couple of cleansers - yarrow and chamomile - the yarrow and comfrey moisturiser, the rosemary and cedar conditioner and the elderflower bath foam. I don't think you passed on all of the recipes at the end; there wasn't really enough time between then and NEWTS for me to need more. I assume you have more - this can't be all that you made."

"No, Miss Granger, that's not exactly an exhaustive list. Here, take this -" he strode over to a

shelf and selected a book from it, "it'll give you some ideas to go on. I have classes today, and you have time, so you can start the process. There's a small - you know where my private laboratory is." He caught himself as he spoke, mentally admonishing himself for walking on eggshells in conversation now. There was no point in pretending that they had no past beyond student and teacher, although he was equally unprepared to acknowledge it directly. To pretend that she did not know that he had a private lab was, frankly, silly - and he preferred not to tend towards the silly, where he could avoid it.

Hermione nodded, glancing towards the door that led to the labs. "Just one thing," she said. He raised an eyebrow in enquiry. "Test subjects?" she asked. He frowned and she added, "we'll need to test the new recipes, surely?"

"I have every confidence in your ability to produce a safe concoction, Miss Granger," he said drily. It would hardly tax the abilities of a first year, let alone someone with her grades.

"It's not the safety I'm concerned with, Professor, it's the efficacy," came the equally dry response. "We need to know that it works, not just that it's safe. I suppose we can test them on ourselves - see what the results are. Thank you for the coffee."

At that, she headed for the lab, leaving Snape staring at her. Test the recipes ... she wanted him to test recipes? No.


	4. Chapter 4

**December 9th**

Hermione put the pile of papers - which had grown by the size of one book and been unceremoniously thrust back into her hands - down on the corner of the lab table. The door closed behind her and she listened as Snape's footsteps faded hollowly away and were gone. She gave them a good minute to stay gone before she allowed herself to sink onto one of the lab stool and bury her head in her hands, sighing heavily. A good night's sleep in the Gryffindor guest rooms had not managed to fully compensate for the fact that the night before that one had been absurdly disturbed; for it was absurd to be so restless when one was returning to a place that held so many good memories and old friends. Her mind was not quite prepared to accept that those memories might contain a sub-category of unfinished business.

Ten years had passed, she was back at school, back in the potions classroom in a sort of figurative way and the potions master was clearly determined that he would be no easier to deal with than he had ever been. Rather than rekindling their friendship, she seemed within forty-eight hours to have moved from a civil, if reserved, correspondence, through one nervous coffee and a somewhat tetchy supper, to the re-emergence of the full student-teacher relationship complete with all the "Miss Granger"s and "Professor Snape"s you could want.

By tomorrow night he'll be taking house points from me again, she thought, the wry humour a weak attempt to distract herself from wondering precisely why his abrupt descent into old formalities was bothering her so.

Another tried and tested route of escape from introspection was work; Hermione took a deep breath and looked around. Clean parchment, fresh quills and ink were laid out neatly on the table exactly where she was expecting them to be. Exactly where I'd would have put them myself, she told herself firmly. Now provided with quill and paper there was no excuse for not making a start.

Carefully, she began to plot out grids; one for hair care and a larger one for skin care. Four columns gave the hair/skin types, rather more rows gave the types of product. That made a basic total of forty preparations to devise in under a fortnight. She sighed again, this time at the thought of the sheer intensity of the work, even aided - or not, as the case might be - by Snape. Ever methodical, she took a third sheet and headed it Optional Extras. Under this went the things that Snape had told Parvati that she couldn't have and then, as an afterthought, added Bath Products and underlined it twice. They might never make their way into the Ms Magic Magazine signature range, but she was willing to bet that any kind of relaxing bath oil would be a necessity for her very soon.

She returned her attention to drawing up some kind of basic plan of attack. It was likely, she thought, that although there were a lot of individual items, they would all share a common base. She shook her head in irritation; this ought to be something that she should recall. But try as she might she could not summon to mind a picture of the potions classroom complete with cauldrons of cold cream and pitcher of jojoba oil - at least not one with any basis in recalled reality. She took a fourth sheet of paper and wrote Basic Ingredients in large script. So, what were the bases they would need to make? Decoctions and tinctures should be no problem; there was always water to hand and ethyl alcohol was a common potions ingredient. Similarly with witch hazel, beeswax and kaolin. However, when it came to cocoa butter, wheatgerm oil and almond oil she paused. In general terms Snape was never usually concerned about his salves being moisturising and conditioning - only effective. In fact, she would not have been surprised if he used anti-comforting ingredients sometimes, just to make a point. None of which ruled out the possibility that in some dark and dusty recess of the potion stores, there might be some odds and ends, testament to that moment, ten years ago, when Severus Snape created something that was "of no earthly use to any creature, living or dead".

Long forgotten habit had taken her halfway to the stores, wand out ready to cast the wards that would allow her access, when she stopped dead, unsure whether to laugh or cry. For an instant - or more properly another instant - she had been back in the time when this had been her home and her right to come and go as she pleased had not been questioned, least of all by her. She felt dislocated, as she had when she entered Snape's rooms for the first time since leaving school. By all rights there should have been a change, something should have been different, unfamiliar. To come back to something left, to know instinctively when things were in their place, to be at home in a place that was not, was an eerie and not entirely comfortable feeling.

And yet it could have been last month, or last week or yesterday that she was here. The same leather chairs, cluttered table, overflowing bookcases; the same copper and bronze tones, incongruous in their warmth. Maybe there were some more odd pieces of bric-a-brac, certainly there would be more books, but she had had to physically fight the urge to take the coffee and the book and curl up in a chair in front of the stove with her notes on the floor in front of her. And maybe that was what he was trying to avoid. Perhaps that was why he had so pointedly told her to work in the lab, detached and objective. She was disturbed by the sudden tightening of her throat, and turned sharply on her heel. Wards were something to ask Snape about later. In the meantime she had a deadline to meet.

XXXXXXXXXX

She was gratified to find that old habits did not fail her, and once engaged on a task her mind obediently shoved all other unwanted noise conveniently off her conscious radar. By the time that the bell rang signalling the end of morning classes, she had managed to sketch out a rough plan of a basic hair care range, with some alternatives and variations. Not only that, she feeling decidedly peckish.

Lunch at the top table was always slightly less relaxed than dinner; friendly chat was punctuated with shop talk and the silent understanding that there was an afternoon of work ahead. Feeling a little bit of an oddity amongst a staff that was clearly "at work", she was reluctant to disturb an earnest conversation between Minerva McGonagall and Ermengarde Sprout which seemed to be about some new administrative requirement. Moving in the direction of Snape, with a vague idea that she might talk to him about wards and access, she suddenly found herself being gently, but firmly, seated in the empty seat next to the DADA teacher - what was his name? Ferdinand? No, Peregrine, that was it, Peregrine Queroz. Distinguished as the first person to return for a second term in office since - well, probably since records began.

Although, she thought loyally, Remus Lupin would have come back if he'd been allowed to.

Now, she was being graced with a smile and hand that was pouring her a glass of water.

"Unless," he said, with a slight incline of the head, "you would prefer wine,"

She smiled in response.

"Not at lunchtime, thank you. Not if I want to get any work done at all this afternoon."

Another smile.

"Ah, you too. Tempting as it would be to sleep through the afternoon, I suppose I really should prevent my over-enthusiastic pupils from destroying themselves and possibly sections of the castle."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I think you probably should."

He looked mournful.

"You're right. It's not the guilt you understand; I just couldn't handle the paperwork."

That made her laugh out loud. And take a good look at him for the first time. She hadn't really been aware of him the night before. Tired from her broken night and the journey, the excitement of reunion fading, she had only been conscious of him as a graceful presence, bidding her a soft and charming welcome to Hogwarts; something of a contrast to her reception by Snape who, for some reason, had made a point of coming to the station especially to be chilly and ungracious.

He was bigger than Snape, she thought - wider shoulders and fuller of face. Dark hair neatly cut, dark eyes with an amused glint, olive skin and good cheekbones. And more, he didn't seem inclined to indulge in the lunchtime chatter but rather to prefer paying attention to her, never being too intrusive, but always seeming interested in her replies. After an early encounter with Snape followed by a solitary mornings work, an inconsequential but charming conversation was just what she wanted. It also managed to supply a goodly amount of information about Professor Queroz. No, he hadn't been to Hogwarts; a private college in Segovia. No, he wasn't Spanish, but Portuguese, sent to study in Spain by his parents. He had one brother and three sisters, all magical. He couldn't explain how he had managed to survive to return for a second year as the

DADA teacher, he could only put it down to luck and the fact that no one better wanted the job.

Hermione tried not to wince at that; if Snape had still wanted the job it hadn't been a very kind thing to say. Then again, it may be that Queroz didn't know about the traditional wrangling over the job. Or perhaps Snape had given up applying for it. Incipient afternoon classes prevented her from exploring the matter, however, and the thought got lost as the school geared itself up for the rest of the day.

XXXXXXXXXX

It was well after the end of class when Snape finally put in an appearance in the lab and Hermione was engrossed in devising a set of complementary skin care products. It had occurred to her that it would be useful if they were could be made cross-compatible, so that one could, say, take one from the combination range and combine with with another from the dry or normal range. Needless to say that substantially increased the complexity of the task. She was so taken up in her charts that Snape's entrance made her jump.

He glared at her startled yelp, and swept across the room without speaking to her. Her explanation died on her lips and she tried to remember whether this was a day with a particularly awkward combination of classes. She didn't think so, but then his timetable could have changed in ten years. Perhaps he had a headache. She remembered those only too well.

Before she could ask he had picked up some of her papers, scanning her preliminary ideas. His only reaction was a series of grunts, from which she could deduce neither approval nor disgust. It was time, she thought, to assert herself.

"I've made a list of the base preparations that we'll need. We need to check against the supplies and order in the right quantities of what we'll need."

For a moment she thought he hadn't heard her. Then she thought he was ignoring her. But as she was about to repeat herself he spoke.

"Why haven't you already done that? I assumed I wouldn't need to oversee the basic steps."

She gritted her teeth.

"I don't have the passwords to disable the wards to the storeroom. For some reason I thought that that might cause me some difficulty."

He looked at her strangely, as if he was somehow disconcerted by her words. Odd, she thought, it wasn't that sharp.

"You already have them," he said eventually.

She blinked.

"I know what they were _ten years ago_. You're surely not telling me you haven't changed the wards in ten years?"

He made a movement that could almost have been diffident.

"After the fall of the Dark Lord there was little need to change on a regular basis. I selected a set that were familiar and have retained them."

She simply nodded; she needed some time to process that snippet of information. As if he felt the need to reclaim the initiative, he added:

"Speaking of not changing things, do I deduce from this that you are still using products designed for teenage problem skin?"

That took her breath away momentarily. She had been there barely twenty-four hours and he was already picking at her life. A stray idea from the afternoon presented itself. She smiled sweetly.

"Interesting you should raise that, _Professor_." She gave his title a slight stress. "I've been thinking that it wouldn't be a great deal of extra work to widen this range to include products for men. More emphasis on herbs and the pharmaceutical properties, but it would be basically the same."

Snape's expression was edging close to outright horror.

"A range for _men_? Men don't use this sort of thing."

"They're very popular amongst Muggle men," she replied innocently.

"Oh _Muggle men_ ", he sneered.

"Oh yes. Some even go to beauty therapists for manicures and facials. And waxing," she added gleefully.

"Miss Granger, _nobody_ will be interested in ... stuff ... for men," he hissed.

"Tell you what," she said brightly, "how about if I write to Parvati and suggest it and we'll let her decide?"

XXXXXXXXXX

The following morning Hermione arrived in Snape's rooms, brandishing a viciously pink sheet of parchment and feeling decidedly, if childishly, victorious.

"She likes the idea," she announced without preamble.

Snape's glare could have boiled water.

"So," she added, "it's a good thing that we've got you to test the line out on."

 **December 10th**

Saturday morning dawned with the clear brilliant light of December, slicing into the room with icy fingers and waking Snape without mercy. He blinked, grimacing, and wondered, not for the first time, why he hadn't chosen to draw the curtains last night.

He swung out of bed, shivering faintly in the chill air of the dungeons and waking fully with the tremor. The view from the windows reminded him of why he didn't draw the curtains as he looked out over a landscape bejewelled by frost, sparkling blue-gold in the dawn.

A thick grey dressing-gown served to take off the chill as Snape padded through into his living room; it was Saturday, no lessons and blessed freedom, but the first order of business would still have to be coffee. He put the coffee pot together quickly, deft hands twisting the water-filled base together with the upper chamber and setting the whole on the stove. He lingered for a moment, warming his hands in the heat radiating from the cast iron, a heat that had yet to defeat the chill of night. Either the house-elves had been slow in restoking the stove that morning, or night had been chillier than expected. No matter, it would warm soon enough and, in the meantime, there was an unexpected pleasure in being wrapped up against the chill that woke him.

It was not until Snape was half-way through the second cup of coffee, settled in a chair by the stove and reading a copy of Ars Alchemica that seemed to have escaped his attention, that the pleasant half-sleepy Saturday morning mood abruptly evaporated.

There was nothing in particular that reminded him but, from one word to the next, between two sips of coffee, dread replaced reverie with a cold greater than anything the night had called up.

Saturday. The staff-old boys Quidditch match. The old boys. Potter.

As if on cue, he heard someone moving about in the laboratory; the walls were too thick to hear through, but a few subtle charms years ago had ensured that he would hear if anyone entered that room whilst he was elsewhere. Hermione had also woken early, it seemed. Miss Granger, he reminded himself. It was safer that way.

So much for peace and solitude. He suppressed an urge to hurl the half-full coffee mug at the wall; it would be a waste of good coffee and, besides, he wasn't entirely certain whether the old wizard down in Somerset who had made the mugs for him was still alive, let alone still working at his surprisingly lucrative Muggle hobby. It would be a shame to lose a good piece of stoneware to a fit of temper over students he didn't even like. Former students. Regardless, they were not worth the mug.

Snape dressed with speed, paying perfunctory attention to the basics - a skincare range for men, he remembered with a snort, splashing water on his face - ridiculous. Buttoned into his Professorial persona, he strode out of his rooms, pausing only to rip the day from Dumbledore's grotesquely cheery Advent calendar. One day less. That was all that could be said about it now.

A couple of long, irritable, strides brought him into the laboratory. The stove here had not yet been lit - the house-elves were not permitted to disturb his working area unless he specifically requested them to do so. Hermione hadn't yet bothered to light it; her breath came in curling translucent clouds, swirling in the dusty sunlight as she bent over the endless pieces of parchment scattered over the table in front of her. A small flame under a nearby cauldron was all the heat in the room.

A flick of a wand and the stove against the wall flared to life; Hermione jumped at the sudden crackling and the crack of expanding metal as a rush of hot air leapt in the chimney.

"Sev - Professor," she said after a moment, staring at him. She visibly gathered herself together. "Good morning," she added, turning back to the parchments.

"Is it?" he muttered under his breath. "You're in here early," he said aloud, moving closer and looking over her shoulder at the scribbling and charts that covered the parchment.

"Umm," she murmured absently. "I needed to check some things over and wanted to get it out of the way. I doubt I'll get much done once the gruesome twosome are here, and with Parvati coming today I wanted to make sure that we were as far ahead as possible."

"Miss Patil is coming today?" asked Snape, recoiling. A pink tinge to his day; all he needed to make it perfect.

"Well, she hasn't said so, but I would be surprised if she didn't." Hermione looked up at him. "She is married to Oliver Wood, after all, and he's certainly going to be here. I assumed she would come with him; it didn't seem an unreasonable assumption."

"No, I suppose not, Miss Granger." Snape frowned as Hermione glared at him. What had he done now? By his standards, that had been a pleasant comment.

"Are you going to help, Professor, or are you simply going to stand there?" came the biting question. Now Snape knew he'd done something, but what ... then memories of chocolate cravings and tears came to him. Perhaps - well, perhaps. He decided that retreat was the wiser option.

"I have duties to see to, Miss Granger. I will, no doubt, see you later." He swept out of the laboratory, removing himself from female hormones; he had had quite enough of those to last a lifetime. He thought he heard Hermione swear as he left but he wasn't certain; given his memories of this particular time of the month, it was entirely plausible.

He prowled the outer reaches of the castle for an hour or so, avoiding the more populated areas, scowling and taking out his bad mood on any hapless students that had the misfortune to be taking shortcuts. No doubt the school legends of the vampiric Potions Master would be augmented but, so long as it eased some of the frustration and irritation, he wasn't remotely concerned. In fact, anything that increased students' dislike and fear of him, and consequently improved their concentration in lessons, could only be for the good.

Eventually even his prowling had to come to end and, as he ran out of obscure corridors, he made his way down towards the castle entrance. Dumbledore would no doubt be looking for him, making sure that he didn't extract himself from the match; worse still, he might send McGonagall or that moron, Queroz, to look for him.

A few staircases - some more co-operative than others - later, Snape had arrived reluctantly in the castle entrance hall. The space was generally busy on a Saturday morning, with the older students coming and going to Hogsmeade and the younger students milling about aimlessly, chattering.

This morning made most Saturday mornings look like an oasis of calm and tranquillity. The chatter assaulted Snape's ears from several staircases above, raising and swooping in a flurry of pitches and volumes, all mingling into an incomprehensible cacophony as Quidditch players and assorted hangers-on all sought to catch up on a decade of news in mere moments. Potter, Weasley, Wood, more Weasleys, and still more inglorious former students, all talking together. He gritted his teeth and strode down.

Snape's arrival in the hall did little to mute the noise; admittedly, the volume fell in his immediate area as he made his way through towards the staffroom corridor on the far side of the hall; he was looking for sanctuary, or as close to it as he could achieve on this day. Behind him followed the usual whispers as former students came to the conclusion that he had not changed. Fools; why should he have changed? It never ceased to amaze him that his students seemed to believe that the fall of Voldemort would have somehow made him into Albus Dumbledore, or something equally unlikely.

It suddenly struck him that Hermione had not, apparently, made that mistake. Perhaps it was their sporadic correspondence over the years or, perhaps, the fact that she knew him rather better than her peers. There was no 'perhaps' about it, he thought whilst he worked his way through the crowd. As he reached the staffroom door, he realised that there was little to be surprised about in the knowledge that Miss Granger had not expected him to have changed.

He had his handle on the door of the room, about to open it, when his luck ran out.

"Professor?"

He had hoped that Hermione was wrong, had hoped neither to see pink nor hear that brittle false brightness.

"Ms Patil," he acknowledged.

"I'd like to see what you've developed so far; you have been working on the line, haven't you?" She had clearly got over any fears or dislike of talking to him, clearly. Ambition - or perhaps it was greed - overcame many things. A pity. The last thing he wanted was to have this conversation, particularly here, where anyone could hear and now - or later - ask Ms Patil exactly what it was that she had been talking to the dread Professor Snape about.

"I suggest you go down to the Potions area, Ms Patil. Miss Granger is still working in there, I believe. She can answer any questions that you have. Good day."

He opened the door and slipped inside before she had a chance to reply. He felt no particular remorse for having sent her down to Hermione; this had all be Hermione's doing, after all, he felt. It would also give her a useful target to snipe at if she was in the temper that he recalled accompanied the chocolate craving and tears.

 **December 11th**

Hermione put down a glass flask on the workbench with rather more vigour than she had intended. A weekend that had promised to be rather pleasant, all told, was turning into one long source of annoyance.

It had begun the previous day with the early morning encounter with Snape. It wasn't that he had done anything intrinsically out of character. Far from it. He had swept in, peered at her work with the air of someone confronting something both unstable and highly explosive, loomed a little and then rapidly excused himself when challenged to provide some constructive contribution to the exercise.

Absolutely no surprises there.

Except that he was the one who was so damned precious about the sanctity of his processes; you would think that he would take a little more interest in them. She wondered wearily why she had ever agreed to come here. Most of all she wondered what mental aberration had ever possessed her to think that Snape had an accessible or even helpful side to him.

A case in point was the proprietorial visit from Parvati Patil. Hermione had absolutely no doubt at all that Snape had diverted her down to the dungeons to avoid the necessity of dealing with her himself. Her ex-schoolmate - school-friend was fast becoming a massive overstatement - had arrived just as Hermione was finishing up for the day and looking forward to an afternoon catching up with her friends in The Three Broomsticks. Parvati had required detailed explanations and samples of the main proposed lines, together with an outline of the suggested male range, and refused to be deflected by the thought that Hermione might have wanted to spend her free time elsewhere.

"Oh you know the boys," she had said airily. "They'll just be spending the afternoon talking about tactics and game play and stuff. Much better that we leave them to it and get on with this."

Only the dinner bell halted the relentless questioning. Arriving in the Great Hall, Parvati fluttered over to Oliver Wood - "Ollie, darling..." - leaving Hermione nursing a sick headache and feeling only slightly less drained than she had after the Ministry debriefings following the fall of Voldemort.

Snape had already been seated at the High Table. She pointedly ignored him and sat next to Peregrine Queroz, who, within minutes of her settling down, had commented that she was looking tired, she was obviously working too hard, she needed to take a break and she absolutely had to promise him that she would be at the Quidditch match the following day. If Snape was scowling at that, she made certain not to notice it.

So there she was on a crisp Sunday afternoon in December, wrapped up warmly and waiting for the match to begin. By common consent all the visitors were seated in the staff stands. It wasn't that they couldn't have all sat with their old houses, but the ten years between 18 and 28 were particularly long ones, especially for a generation that had fought a war in the meantime. She had only just arrived; the morning had been spent alternately working and fuming about the fact that "duties" had apparently once more prevented Snape from providing any useful input. His absence had meant, yet again, that she had been unable to do more than exchange brief hugs and hellos with Harry and Ron.

Of course, long experience told her that it was pointless to expect sensible conversation from any of her friends on the morning of a Quidditch match. That, however, was not going to stop her from blaming Snape for the situation.

As luck - or otherwise - would have it, the first person that she saw when she got to the top of the stands was the Potions Master himself, sitting in the row behind Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall. He was noticeable firstly for the fact that he was one of the few members of staff not actually playing and, secondly, for the fact that the only free space on the benches was immediately next to him. In fact, it appeared that the rest of the spectators were uncomfortably bunched up in an effort not to be within his personal ambit.

Sighing, she made her way forward. Glancing around she spotted the familiar red heads of Fred and George Weasley. Fred rolled his eyes in the direction of Snape and George made cheerful throat-cutting movements. Smiling back, she squeezed past another seated figure, dressed in a black cloak, but readily identifiable by the cerise fur collar trim and matching hat. One delicate hot pink clad hand was laid on her arm as she passed.

"Hermione, darling, how's the work going?" _Are you sure you can spare the time to be here?_ came the clear subtext.

Her smile became forced.

"It's going fine, thank you." No thanks to you, she mentally directed at the back of Snape's head.

By the time she had settled herself next to him her acknowledgement was curt in the extreme.

She set her gaze forward, determined to enjoy the match, and ignore Snape as far as possible. She felt a movement beside her, almost as if Snape were extending himself to speak to her, but if he had had anything to say, it was drowned out by the roar as the "Old Boys" team flew out of the dressing rooms.

The line up was, in some ways surprising. There had obviously been a concerted effort to be as even handed between the houses as possible. Oliver Wood and Ginny and Ron Weasley represented Gryffindor. She saw Cho Chang and Roger Davies from Ravenclaw and Jonas Summerby and Zacharias Smith from Hufflepuff. There were no Slytherins. Slytherin House had suffered the heaviest of the losses during the war; many of its better players were dead or, like Draco Malfoy, simply missing.

She wondered, briefly, how Snape felt about that. Beside her she felt another movement and then heard him mutter under his breath.

"A team of seekers. How inspired."

 _So we can rule out a sentimental outpouring of regret then._

It was true, though, that many of the players would not be retaking their old school positions. Ginny was Seeker and Oliver Keeper. Zacharias Smith remained a Chaser, but he was joined by Cho and Summerby. Ron had moved from Keeper to play Beater together with Roger Davis.

She was fighting an odd melancholy at the sight of her old schoolmates back out on the Quidditch pitch, when a second roar announced the staff side. The identities of the players had been kept a secret, and had, naturally, led to prolonged and, occasionally lurid, speculation. She was, in some ways, surprised that Snape wasn't playing; she knew that he was competent on a broom and was well versed in the rules. Perhaps his involvement stemmed more from house rivalry than from genuine interest. Or perhaps it was something to do with the lack of Slytherins on the opposing team.

The staff team were now doing a circuit of the ground. Hyacinth Hooch, to no one's surprise was leading the team and playing Beater. Hermione thought that she paused fractionally in front of the staff box, and wondered - smothering her first laugh of the day - whether Hooch was still trying to flirt with Snape; she fought the desire to look at Snape to gauge his reaction. Next to Hooch flew the other beater, Professor Vector, followed by the three Chasers, Professors Sinistra and Queroz and, much to Hermione's astonishment, Madam Pince, the librarian. Professor Sprout took up the position as Keeper and above them all zipped tiny Professor Flitwick, the staff seeker. As he passed the staff stands Peregrine Queroz caught her eye, and she could have sworn that he gave her a swift wink.

The noise dimmed a little and the voice of the commentator boomed out.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen," - it was Lee Jordan, Hermione suddenly realised - "please put your hands together for our very special celebrity referee" - there was snort from her right at this - "Mr ... Harry ... Potter!"

The stands erupted as Harry flew out into the arena. He did, Hermione thought, have the grace to look somewhat embarrassed at both the introduction and the crowd reaction. If Snape made any further comment it was lost in the noise.

Harry flew to the centre of the ground, Quaffle in his hand. He spoke a few words to Madam Hooch and Oliver Wood, then he threw the Quaffle into the air and blew his whistle.

The game was, she reflected, almost as interesting for the personalities as for the play. She was used to the effect that the game had on the likes of Ron and Ginny, but it was bringing out a competitive edge in the staff that she hadn't seen before even allowing for her unusually close knowledge.

Madam Pince, for example, had an intent, almost predatory look on her face as she skilfully maneuvered her broom, catching the Quaffle and passing it forwards to Sinstra or Queroz, evading the best effort of Cho or Jonas or Zacharias to stop her. Flitwick was moving nearly as fast as the Snitch itself and Hooch was playing Beater so hard that Hermione was beginning to suspect her of Slytherin tendencies. There was clearly no quarter asked or given.

But the star of the match, from Hermione's point of view, was Peregrine Queroz. Her eyes followed him around the field as he ducked and dived and passed, magnificent in his Quidditch robes, the hinted athleticism obvious now. A quick scan across the stands showed that she wasn't the only female admiring the scenery; many of the girls across the houses were watching him intently. For a moment, she forgot Parvati Patil, and the bad-tempered man by her side, and just enjoyed the simple pleasure of watching someone doing something really well. It didn't hurt that that someone was rather attractive and extremely charming either.

She found herself applauding wildly as Queroz scored for the fourth time, bringing the score to 80-40 to the staff.

Harry was now beginning to look as hot as the players as he followed the actions, calling foul on Hooch and Vector on more than one occasion. Above him, Ginny was clearly having her work cut out marking Professor Flitwick, who had the advantage of size and was using it for all it was worth. However, it was Ginny who saw the Snitch first, and simply went for it in her fastest flat out dive. Flitwick spotted it a fraction of a second later, but that fraction of a second was all that Ginny needed. That, and a shameless sideswipe to her old Charms professor, gave her the time she needed to wrap her hand around it, clinching the game for the "Old Boys" 190 to 80.

Deafening noise filled the ground once again, for although the students enjoyed a fierce game of Quidditch, what they really liked was to see their teachers lose.

In front of Hermione, Albus Dumbledore stood up. Immediately, the noise dropped. Hermione couldn't see whether it was due to a charm or pure force of presence. One enhanced by the other, she suspected. A wand touched to the headmaster's throat made his voice audible to everyone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, that was one of the finest matches this school has seen. There is only one thing that can follow such an event." He paused theatrically. "High tea in the Great Hall."

This time the cheer was accompanied by the sound of stampeding feet climbing over benches and thundering down the stairs back towards the school buildings.

Hermione had no very great desire to get caught in the crush - it wasn't as if there was any risk that the food would run out, after all - so she decided to wait until the worst of the rush was over. Dumbledore and McGonagall passed her - probably in order to impose some sort of control on the hordes, she thought - and the box went quiet. Had she given the matter any thought she would have assumed that Snape had also left, so she was startled when he stood up next to her.

"Professor," she said, to cover her surprise, "I thought you would have been down in the Great Hall by now."

"Really," he said shortly. "Given that I cannot apparate on school grounds and that you are in my way, I am at a loss as to how I could have managed that."

His tone rekindled her annoyance, not that it had ever really been extinguished.

"You could have climbed over the seats," she suggested tartly.

"I do not clamber over furniture like some kind of primate, Miss Granger," he returned.

That was all it took. She turned to face him, hands on her hips.

"How long is this going to go on?" she enquired.

"How long is _what_ going to go on?"

"This." She gestured widely. "Let's see. Four days ago I was "Hermione". Now it's "Miss Granger" and "Professor Snape" like I was one of your pupils." She watched him blink at her tone. She carried on, driven by frustration and confusion. "And you were the one making such a fuss about your processes and what have you. When are you going to come and do something to actually help out rather than swan in and out and make sarcastic remarks? We have a tight deadline, if you recall, and the whole purpose of me being here is to make it easier for _us_ ," she stressed the word, "to meet it."

His face went rigid.

"The school term is not yet over. I have a house full of pupils for whom I am responsible. I have classes to teach and homework to mark. I have detentions to supervise, and other general school duties. Forgive me for failing to be at your beck and call in between times."

She took a deep breath and gritted her teeth. From somewhere in the recesses of her memory she recalled his habit of attacking, to distract her into temper and away from the point she was trying to make. Not this time, Severus, she thought

"OK, I see that you're busy. But that doesn't explain why you don't want to use my name." She tried a smile. It felt forced. "And it feels a little awkward to be calling you Professor Snape again after all these years."

She could detect no flicker of a response.

"I'm expected in the Great Hall." He brushed past her. "If you will excuse me."

She watched his retreating back, suppressing the desire to scream. He hadn't called her anything that time. She wondered whether that was better or worse.


	5. Chapter 5

**December 12th**

Hiding in the noise. Hiding from the noise, the glare, the glitter. How much longer would he have to stay? A swift glance towards Dumbledore suggested that reprieve would be a while in coming; the Headmaster played his guilt trips as though they were music and he a musician. Voldemort was dead, life had continued, and still he was caught by obligation and honour.

Frivolity, a seemingly endless whirl of celebrations and parties and meaningless chatter, now emptier even than before - at least before the fall of Voldemort such things were tinged with the desperation of knowing too well the possibilities of the future, with a sense of trying to live and not knowing when you would die. Not that he had ever really participated, despite a keener sense of impending doom than most; he had faced it at each meeting. Perhaps that was less stressful than awaiting a final battle. It was hard to tell and, in any case, it almost certainly would depend upon the individual.

But this, now - Halloween balls, New Year balls, graduation balls, Quidditch dinners, Valentine dinners, Summer balls, Autumn dances, Christmas parties and too many people and more ... and more ... each day, each week, some new reason, some new excuse, and someone new called everyone else together again. He was tired, and it was tiring and ...

... and he was being unreasonable. The parties were no more numerous now than they had ever been - Dumbledore was simply more sociable than anyone had a right to be, thought Snape sourly. This Quidditch match was a case in point - if it could even be said to have a point. He certainly hadn't seen one, unless Dumbledore was suddenly providing parties for Hermione to drool all over that fool, Queroz.

That particular train of thought derailed abruptly. He sounded jealous, even to himself, and that would never do. Why should he be jealous? Just because he had sat next to her yesterday - had ensured, by pulling on a scowl and frozen expression even more voluminous than his cloak, that the only free space was that beside him. And then she had spent the entire match following the idiot's moves on a broom. Whilst he spent the entire match watching her.

Damn it, this was intolerable. Not the noise, the chatter of students and High Table - although that was bad enough - but the incessant churn of his thoughts. It felt almost like an obsession, watching her, wondering when he would next speak to her, thinking up reasons to speak to her. Then forcing himself not to speak, not to watch, and not to accidentally stray across her path in the castle. Analysing everything she did, everything she said, just to see whether ...

He didn't even know where it had come from, this - well, obsession really was the only word for it. It had sprung, fully grown, from a meeting in London and a handful of letters in the last ten years; developed overnight on her appearance at Hogwarts. It had - he wanted to think - come from nowhere. But, in this case, nowhere would have to be given a name: Longbottom.

They never had found the mystery potion that the Gryffindor incompetent had produced, despite the experiments at the time - and since, in his spare time.

It had been a time out of time, for him; full of horrors and yet free from the single horror that was his life then. More than anything, it had been an unusual connection, a long moment of mutual understanding unparalleled before or since. Little wonder now that he felt so called to Hermione.

Wonder was, however, irrelevant. And frankly bloody useless at this point and after so much time. So he had pulled on the mantle of the 'greasy git' with fervour, deliberately opening up a gap, a chasm, between them. Anything else would risk her knowing about this compulsion; if things were awkward now, it was nothing as to what would happen if she were to know. At worst she would pity him, and that would be intolerable. At best she would never speak to him again. And that was also not an option.

He had, perhaps, overdone the persona - and certainly done it too late. She had deservedly called him on it yesterday afternoon and, to be fair, he couldn't fault her anger although he could most definitely use it. All the same, perhaps he could come down the lab more often, no matter how much the chatter in his mind screamed danger to him.

Snape looked around the table again, trying to blank out the monologue that paraded through his mind in turns and twists like a mobius strip of insistent consciousness. Old boys, old girls and staff, all gossiping and switching from one person to another, one topic to another. Snatches of conversation drifted above the verbal melée from time to time, repeating moments of yesterday's - and history's - Quidditch matches, catching up on personal histories or continuing a friendship in miscellaneous words.

Queroz was leaning towards Hermione, eyes bright with attention and attraction. Snape watched for a moment as Hermione responded to the interest with flattered amusement, and then shook his head. Jealousy was a waste of energy. If that was what she wanted, well, it was being offered to her. He would do better to simply get her out of his mind.

Dumbledore caught his eye and winked; please let the old man not be able to read minds. Probably a forlorn hope but heartfelt nonetheless. The last thing he needed was a geriatric Cupid playing on his behalf.

The plates changed in a moment, distracting the chatter for an even shorter moment as everyone took in the change of courses; then the level rose again, the conversation now on food for a short time, debating the merits of the various desserts in front of them, recalling other desserts and still, of course, discussing the Quidditch match.

Patil was gazing at her husband in almost as adoring a fashion as Queroz at Hermione; and for the same reasons? Perhaps, although she had won him. Maybe it was a defence mechanism to protect her position; Quidditch had its fair share of unscrupulous female followers, he understood. Here, it made an interesting counterpoint to the brittle pink ego that had demanded his time and his energy - albeit it indirectly - and was, no doubt, thinking up ways to demand more.

Men's toiletries ... He shook his head again, avoiding the eyes of those few who took notice. Hermione would love that; a decade late, but no doubt revenge for his usual routine was about to be visited upon him.

And back again; no more than six degrees of separation that ensured that his mind would never stray too far from that topic. Snape closed his eyes; a benefit of a personality cultivated over decades was the ability to do that which others would be criticised for, and still be ignored. This was ... it had to be unhealthy. He wasn't even interested in the girl - the woman - for heavens' sake. Too easy to call this love, and too wrong. It was safe, certainly. Most likely the sign of a mind bored by an easy life, for all the superficial danger of Potions lessons. Something to pick at, like the scab of a scar, with no danger of being called upon to actually do anything about it. A stab of pain, to remind him that he was alive. A mental slash, with metaphysical wounds. A distraction, decorating the edges of lunacy. Maybe that was it; a delayed effect of Crucio and other assorted hexes and Unforgivables. It would make for an interesting research topic - the long term mental health implications of being a spy in the Death Eater movement.

Hermione was still talking to Queroz, a conversation too low for even a word to escape, with the odd comment to others around her when the conversation flowed in her direction. She seemed, perhaps, just a little reserved, uncomfortable. That almost certainly his imagination, or simply wishful thinking.

"Severus, are you coming to join us?"

He almost jumped, startled by the voice behind him, then realised that the meal was over and the party was moving on. Dumbledore was looking at him over the tiny half-moon glasses that he wore when he chose - more fashion than necessity, since he rarely if ever actually looked through them. The rest of the staff and guests were starting to leave the table, still talking, still chattering.

"I don't think so, Headmaster. If you'll excuse me."

He didn't wait for a response, rising from his seat and sweeping through the small door at the back of the Hall. He had had quite enough of company today; unfortunately, it was his own company. Always his own company.

 **December 13th**

Hermione found herself staring into the mirror and looking forward to the end of term with an intensity that would have been totally foreign to the eager pupil she had once been. Several days of entertainments were intruding on the ever-shortening time left before Parvati would arrive to claim her perfumed and bottled pound of flesh. Add to that the effort of handling a student body over-excited by the presence of several celebrities and the suspension of normal classes, and a sour-tempered Snape - made even more so, presumably, for the same reasons - and she was beginning to feel more than a little strung out.

Tonight was event number three in the current Season; the Yule Ball. She dragged a brush unenthusiastically through her hair and wondered whether she should wear it up or down.

It wasn't that she didn't appreciate and support Dumbledore's enthusiasm for parties, but there ought, she mused, to be a limit somewhere.

Snape had been avoiding her since the Quidditch match; at least he hadn't appeared in the lab - although a neatly labelled rack of prototypes for the men's range had disappeared from the workbench, so she assumed that he had been in, or Dobby had developed a new interest in personal grooming - and he had always managed to be several people away from her whenever they were both constrained to appear in the same public place. He had certainly not made any attempt to even acknowledge her at the meal the previous evening; he had appeared more intent on glowering alternately at his food and at the world in general and then vanishing at the first opportunity that had presented itself. Not that she had been too much later leaving herself, of course, but it was the principle of the thing. Only the conversation with Queroz prevented the evening from being unaccountably dismal.

And, if he hadn't offered to escort to the Ball, she would probably have been without a companion for tonight as well.

XXXXXXXXXX

After some more thought, she had decided to wear her hair up. It was elegant and a couple of charms secured it firmly. It also perfectly complemented her outfit; a pencil straight skirt, worn with a high-necked fitted jacket, both in black velvet, with the collar and front fastening delicately embroidered with twining gold threads and sparkling jewels. Since her last year at school she had had a taste for understated elegance, and there was no question that this was both.

Queroz's eyes sparkled when she opened the door to his knock. He took her hand and bowed low, brushing his lips softly against the back of it.

"You look magnificent, my dear," he murmured. "Simply exquisite."

Hermione smiled in response, feeling a gratifying mixture of flattery and satisfaction. The compliments sounded well coming from an attractive man; they were certainly not terms she would ever expect to hear from Snape.

Queroz swept her through the castle and into the Great Hall and a warm wash of welcome and compliments. They made their way through the crowd and up to the top table, passing Snape as they took their places. He simply scowled at them and looked away. Hermione sighed more loudly than she had intended to, and Queroz tightened his grip on her arm.

"Don't let that bad-tempered fool upset you, my dear," he said softly.

A spark of anger lit within her. She wasn't about to let Snape's sulking ruin yet another evening.

"Don't worry," she replied, "I have every intention of having an excellent time."

Queroz laughed, a gentle musical sound.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, holding the chair away from the table so that she could sit down.

Once the feast was over and the tables moved back, the main purpose of the evening could get underway; the dancing. Queroz was, naturally, the first to lead her out onto the floor. Hermione was hardly a regular party-goer but a working life at Oxford involved fairly frequent formal occasions and ensured that her dancing skills were not allowed to get completely rusty. Whilst she knew that she wasn't an expert, she thought that she gave a reasonable account of herself on the dance floor. Queroz was an easy partner, graceful and sure on his feet. She had little difficulty in following his steps and was very soon beginning to enjoy herself, forgetting Snape and his impossible moods.

"You dance beautifully, my dear," said Queroz over the music. "Where did you learn?"

So much for forgetting.

"I learnt in my last year at school," she said, a little evasively. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"It was a good idea," he confirmed. "There are few things more delightful than sweet music and a beautiful woman."

His hand between her shoulder blades pulled her infinitesimally closer, and then the song finished, the dancers separated and everybody clapped. Before Queroz could say or do anything else, another voice interjected.

"My dance, I think."

Queroz gracefully moved back, the band started up again and Hermione was pulled into the embrace of Harry Potter.

She smiled in genuine pleasure.

"Harry, how lovely. I was beginning to wonder if I would get any chance to talk to you at all whilst you were here."

Harry Potter, still small and wiry, as befitted a Seeker, but now with the marks of an adult in his face and bearing, laughed wryly.

"So was I. Albus has had us doing Quidditch clinics the last couple of days. I'm exhausted. I don't know how Hooch has the energy to do it every day."

"Well, Hooch isn't 'a celebrity'." She gave the words a familiar twist.

Harry pulled a face.

"He's still as cheerful as ever, isn't he?"

Snape again.

"You've been talking to Snape?"

"Mmm." Harry paused as they changed direction to avoid colliding with another couple. "Ron and I were running the Slytherin clinics today. They have some promising players, if they can just overcome their urge to kill the opposing team."

"Isn't that what Quidditch is about?" she teased, feeling an odd reluctance to discuss Snape with Harry.

"Not officially," he returned with a grin. "Anyway, Snape was supervising the clinics - presumably he thought we were going to poison his team or something. He didn't say very much, just glared a lot. It was quite comforting in a way. I don't think I could have handled it if he'd come over and given me a manly hug or something."

Hermione choked and missed her step at the vision. Fortunately for the rest of the dance floor it was the end of the dance and impulsively, she pulled Harry into a hug.

"I've missed you," she said. "We should get together more often."

A hand on her shoulder made her jump.

"Unhand that woman, Potter. There are other, more deserving, partners in line."

Ron Weasley pulled her away from Harry and onto the floor for the next dance. After that, she barely had the chance to sit down. Ron, Harry, Dumbledore, Queroz, Zacharias Smith and Roger Davies all danced with her. Even Oliver Wood partnered her once, although she could have sworn that he kept nervously glancing in Parvati's direction.

The thought of Parvati brought her back to the subject that had been hanging around on the edge of her consciousness all evening: Snape. Hanging around was the word, she thought. She had been expecting him to evaporate as soon he was able, true to form, but instead he had stayed, prowling the edge of the Hall, scattering students as he went, never participating but always floating on the edge of her vision, a black speck like the beginnings of a migraine.

Eventually, the combination of the heat and early warnings of sore feet made her move away from the main crowd, intending to make a quiet exit. She was almost there when a voice made her stop.

"Leaving so soon, Miss Granger?"

Snape had come up behind her. She stopped and turned.

"I think so," she said. "The Ball seems to be winding down."

This wasn't strictly true; the younger pupil contingent had mostly left, but the older pupils and the adults were still going strong.

Snape stood there, just looking at her. He was wearing his dress robes, almost indistinguishable from his normal attire.

"Did you want something in particular?" she asked eventually.

"I wondered if you would care to dance, but you appear to be leaving."

The request, if it was one, was delivered so flatly that she wasn't quite sure of her ground. Firmly, she tried to ignore the fact that her heart hed leapt, just a very tiny amount, at the thought.

"Are you asking me for a dance?" she said cautiously.

He shrugged.

"I suppose so," he said indifferently.

Typical Snape finesse, she thought.

"I would be happy to dance with you, Severus," she said, stressing his name just a little.

"Very well then," he said, turning and moving back towards the centre of the Hall, waiting for her to join him.

She stepped up close to him and he took her in the classical ballroom dance hold, holding her right hand, his own right hand just above the small of her back, in between her shoulder blades.

And her body remembered. Remembered the lessons, the steps, the way he controlled their movement, the way the slightest pressure from his hand moved her body now one way, now the other, all synchronised with the pulse of the music. All her partners that evening had been competent - a pleasure to dance with - but with none of them had she felt this physical response that almost by-passed the conscious direction of her mind. Her left hand was on his upper arm; if she moved it to his shoulder and along to his neck she knew what she would find there, how it would feel. Her body remembered.

Her right hand was held in his left, palm to palm, his hand strong and confident, his skin warm.

She wondered if she could pick up a faint woodsy smell from him - cedarwood or maybe cypress - but it was hard to tell. Virtually every person in the room had applied some form of scent that evening and the increasing body heat meant that the air was full of volatiles; it was hard to identify anyone in particular.

Snape said nothing as they danced, just looked past her to a point in the middle distance, but it didn't matter. Her body remembered what her mind was busy denying.

When the dance finished, he released her and walked away, leaving her standing there, momentarily disorientated, aware that her heart was beating faster than normal; certainly faster than was justified by the mild exertion on the dance floor.

Damn, she thought slightly incoherently. Just when she'd managed to get herself into a nice routine of being irritated by the man, one innocuous social encounter left her gaping like some stupid adolescent. So what if she was still attracted to Snape; it was hardly going to improve their working relationship to resurrect the memory of a ridiculous crush brought on by totally exceptional circumstances. Not when she'd gone out of her way to make sure that her letters were all polite and professional and, above all, _adult_.

Adult, yes that was it. Whatever she might feel herself, their relationship needed to be adult and professional. There was nothing else that he needed to know.

The band was still playing. She shook herself. It was definitely time to leave before Ron or Harry or Queroz spotted her standing here like an idiot and wanted to know what was wrong. This was not something that she needed to share with any of them.

It was already quite complicated enough.

 **December 14th**

The clock struck 13; one of Dumbledore's conceits, signalling the end of the day, although Snape was sure no-one else noticed. Too subtle to notice, unless you were expecting it - generally, the melée only spotted it when a dance was held on the 30th. Rather hard to overlook a clock striking 30.

Midnight. Perhaps now he could go to bed, get some sleep, try not to think about how Hermione had felt in his arms as they danced. Try not to think of the memories that had re-surfaced, oddly skewed by the shift in perspective. Try not to think about the fact that she had spent so much of the evening with that buffoon, Queroz.

Snape took scant pleasure in noticing that Hermione had slipped away from the dance alone, immediately after they had danced. She had, after all, been on the verge of leaving when he had approached her to dance. Few others had left, so far, ebbing and flowing in a congested mass of bodies in the room before him.

"How goes it, Severus?"

The voice came from his left and Snape resisted, barely, the urge to close his eyes and grimace. A banal question and he had no recollection of ever inviting the speaker to use his first name. He settled for an abrupt exhalation before he turned to the speaker.

"A ballroom full of teenage hormones, Queroz. How else would it go but badly?"

The acid required no effort to conjure. The man standing beside him was sufficient inspiration; tall, dark and handsome would no doubt be the usual description with, again no doubt, some comment about his personality. Affable, perhaps. Charming, of course.

Pain in the bloody neck, definitely. But Snape thought he might be alone in that particular description.

"Not an admirer of young love?"

Good grief, the man could ask the most asinine of questions. What was he doing here, anyway? Snape had expected that he had killed the tendency to small talk last year; Queroz had largely left him alone after attempting some initial forays into conversation when he had originally arrived.

"If any students were indeed in love, perhaps it could be admired. Although, speaking personally, I find nothing admirable in an emotion which is chiefly manifest in profoundly stupid actions and inevitably results in one person irritating another. That aside, what is undoubtedly taking place on the floor in front of us owes rather more to lust than any so-called finer emotion. All it will do is distract them - whether it goes well or badly - and consequently make my next few lessons even more of a trial as I try to prevent some love-sick idiot from blowing the castle and all of us from this world to the next. So, no, Queroz, I am not an admirer of young love."

The DADA teacher simply laughed, and Snape could feel his teeth grinding painfully. He wondered whether the stressed enamel could be heard by others, or whether it was a cacophony for his ears alone.

"Surely they're not all idiots, Severus? The young woman you danced with just now, Miss Granger, for example ..." the question trailed off.

Finally, thought Snape. There had to be some reason for Queroz to have sought him out; he rather thought it had just been unveiled.

"Miss Granger? She is no longer a student but I am certain that she is just as capable of making an idiot of herself over a man as any another woman," he drawled. At Queroz's look of pleasure, Snape winced inwardly. He was tired, slipping, or he would have realised that Queroz would interpret that comment to his advantage.

"You think so? I suppose you know her well, as she's working in the dungeons with you."

What was the man after? A written invitation from Snape to pursue Hermione? He seemed to be doing well enough without one. It was past time for this conversation to end.

"Miss Granger has been provided with laboratory space in the dungeons of this school. I neither know nor care what she does with that space. I would suggest that you direct your questions to Professor McGonagall. Miss Granger was, after all, Gryffindor." Snape punctuated the statement with a low glower before turning and stalking out of the Hall. Supervision duties be damned, and he rather thought that they had ended at midnight anyway.

He stalked through the corridors of the school with characteristic stealth and malevolence, torn between a desire to find someone - something, anything - to punish and an equal desire to encounter no-one. Pity it was too late in the year for the roses to be blooming.

He snorted, startling the picture that he was passing at the time. The young girl in the portrait whirled around, gasping silently and then subsided as she saw the tall figure in black scowl and mutter to himself. "A perfect metaphor, all told." She watched him retreat down the corridor, all precise movements and frustrated energy, and wondered just what it was that he was upset about now. He rarely seemed to be anything other than unhappy but this was unusual, even for him, these days. She slipped from the frame in search of other news, other rumours.

The corridors were silent, students all either in the Hall or in bed. Snape chose not to speculate as to whether they were in the right beds. Much as he would have liked it to be different, when he reached the dungeons no House had fewer points than they had started with at midnight. The echo of silence picked up as the ceilings grew lower with each passing step, the soft rustle of his cloak and dull step of his boots on the stone floor amplified by temper and self-disgusted awareness.

Snape found himself in Hermione's lab at last. She was no doubt asleep, elsewhere; the room was empty of her physical presence for all that she was evident everywhere. Notes in a careful handwriting familiar from her letters were stacked on the desk, ingredients ordered in a characteristic fashion - identical to his own, a point that brought back memories faster than anything else about the lab when he realised it.

Suddenly Snape looked down at his hands, half-checking to make sure that they still were his hands, that they hadn't suddenly metamorphosed in a pair rather less masculine. The sense of the past, history unspoken, permeated the stone walls and careful order in experimentation set out in front of him. Months of experimentation, more desperate, more futile than this exercise in consumerism were written in the chill damp air and no less present for the passage of years.

Why now? Why notice it now? He had been working in here for the past few nights, checking and refining Hermione's work - not that she had apparently noticed. Churlish of him to find it annoying that she hadn't, as he had been careful to remove all evidence of that work - apart from his self-tests, although even those apparently weren't in evidence, for all the reaction he had had from her; he wasn't inclined to think that the testing had made all that much of a difference to his appearance but, in the end, it didn't really matter. Much of this was smoke and mirrors in any case, and more than half of those who tried out the promises either didn't need them or wouldn't use the potions for as long as necessary to have the desired effect. Charms were so much quicker, if completely ineffective below the glamour and surface. He was half-surprised that Ms Patil hadn't chosen to package charms for her magazine - instant superficial results seemed more likely to appeal to her. But then, the success of charms depended on the caster; no amount of packaging and explanation would make them work for those without talent. Potions were more egalitarian in that aspect; as long as the potion maker knew what they were doing, the abilities - and more likely lack of abilities - of the user were irrelevant.

This potion maker knew what she was doing; always had done. The neat annotations to the recipes were unnecessary proof of that, but Snape scanned them again, concentrating on the ideas and experiments, trying to put out of his mind the recollections that the dance had pulled to the fore. No success; the handwriting simply drew the memories further into the night around him, images circling him.

Snape sagged into a nearby chair, staring blindly into the silvered moonlight that filtered through the dusty windows in the room and its shades of chill grey and memories. Forgotten sounds and sensations drifted, fled and flickered into being in his imagination. A dance of a different nature, but the memories pulled at him just as they had done in the Hall earlier. Quiet gasps, skin against skin, sensation on sensation; half-remembered in spite of a desperate attempt to forget. More potent still, the memory of a mind, regardless of body.


	6. Chapter 6

**December 15th**

The last day of of term arrived and brought with it an abrupt change in the weather. Although the last few days had been eventful - at least, from the perspective of the students - they had also been rather dull and nondescript climatically speaking. However, the morning had brought crisp, clear air and a refreshing chill that promised a dry trip to Hogsmeade station for those pupils returning to their families for the festive season. The Hogwarts Express was also returning most of the adult visitors to their other lives; Harry, Ron, Cho and the other Quidditch players were heading back to London and then on to whatever work and Christmas had in store. The previous evening had, in fact, been the only proper reunion that the old school friends had achieved given the current demands on their time, and what had started as a quiet meet-up had quickly degenerated into a full scale party. Only the fact that Hermione had remained vaguely clear-headed enough to cast some well-timed, and much-needed, silencing charms, had prevented the wrath of authority in the dread person of Argus Filch from descending on them.

She refused to feel guilty about taking an evening off; in point of fact, a relaxed evening in the company of good friends had considerably lessened her feelings of tension and had provided the ideal opportunity to suppress any worrying feelings that might still be lingering from the Yule Ball two nights ago - although there had been the inevitable teasing about her dance with Snape. She had been a little surprised to find that whilst neither Harry nor Ron spoke of their former Potions Master with affection, most of the vitriol seemed to have disappeared.

"He was a git at school," Ron had said idly, "and I expect he still is one, but I hardly wake up every morning plotting my revenge on him. Voldemort is gone and life moves on. And you should be grateful. After all, I could have tried to console you like I did at the Valentine's Ball in our final year."

He had grinned wickedly and Hermione had felt herself blush. Cho and Ginny had immediately picked up on that and the story was told - at least, the heavily edited version - despite the apparent softening of his attitude to Snape, she hadn't thought that Ron was quite ready to know exactly _who_ he had tried to kiss that night - amidst shrieks of laughter, and the conversation had moved on.

Memory, both recent and not-so-recent, now curved her lips into a smile as she negotiated her way down the main stairs, book in hand, through a melée of trunks and animal cages and milling children. At the foot of the stairs, looking for all the world like a policeman on point duty, was Peregrine Queroz. He was intent on trying to corral small groups of children so that they could be dispatched to the station; the children appeared to be equally intent on defeating him, darting here and there to exchange comments and insults with friends and enemies. Queroz's normal poise was beginning to look a little worse for wear and a Muggle phrase about herding cats came into her mind. He smile became wider as present amusement took over from past reminiscence.

He noticed her picking her way down the stairs, and paused to make an elegant small bow to her.

"Hermione, how lovely to see you. Please forgive the chaos." He gestured to the stairs and hall.

She finally made it to floor level and to within comfortable speaking distance of him.

"I see they've left you to it then."

He pulled a slightly comical face.

"Yes, indeed. Even Professor Snape was adamant that he had urgent house business to attend to this morning."

 _I'll just bet he did._

"Ah well, it'll all be over by dinner," she said encouragingly.

"And peace will descend," he added with a gentle smile.

"Oh yes," she agreed. "I must say, I do enjoy the castle more when it's quieter."

The last words were spoken with increasing volume, as something feline and something avian suddenly decided to engage in a competition to demonstrate whose dignity had been most comprehensively and loudly outraged.

Queroz looked regretful.

"I think I'd better erm...,"

She nodded.

"I think you'd better as well. It sounds as if it it's about to get nasty."

She was about to move away and then paused as Queroz lightly lad a hand on her arm.

"Are you staying here over the holidays?" he asked.

She nodded, although it was impossible to ignore the mayhem building up on the other side of the hall.

"Excellent," he said happily, "Shall I see you at dinner?"

She nodded again, as an ear-splitting squawk testified to the superiority of paw over beak when it came to launching offensive action through a confined opening.

"I'll look forward to that, at least," he said ruefully, and then darted over to deal with a pair of indignant familiars and tearful owners.

Hermione threaded her way to the edge of the throng and headed for the sanctuary of the dungeons. The rest of the day in the lab, and then a peaceful dinner in the Great Hall with Queroz; a very civilised start to the holidays, she thought. If nothing else it would distract from the Russian roulette of Snape's moods and the fact that she had absolutely no feelings whatsoever that she needed to conceal from him.

When she reached the lab she was surprised to see that the wards had already been removed. Given that Snape had pleaded urgent house business to avoid the supervision of the departing pupils, she had assumed that he would use the same excuse to stay out of the lab. Instead, when she cautiously opened the door, she saw a rack of neatly labelled sample bottles sitting on the edge of the workbench.

Curiously, she put her book down and picked up one of the bottles. It was labelled in Snape's hand, no more legible for being small. Even after ten years of only sporadic written contact, she could read his writing with surprising ease:

Shampoo/Rinse Base: _cider vinegar; actives: thyme, cedarwood, nettle, sage._

She put it back and picked up another and read:

Shampoo Base: _glycerin, jojoba; actives: cypress, cedarwood, rosemary._

Intrigued, she pulled out the stopper and sniffed at it. It was pleasantly herbal. Looking at the actives she guessed that it might be for oily hair although it was lacking the geranium or lemon that she might have added to give it a more feminine fragrance. She sniffed again. It definitely was rather nice, she thought, and somehow familiar although she couldn't place it; perhaps it was just that she had been working very closely with these types of ingredients. She was about to pick another bottle from the rack when a movement behind her disturbed her.

"I trust it meets with your approval," Snape said, with a touch of sarcasm.

She put the bottle down slowly and turned.

"I wasn't expecting to see you here today," she said carefully.

"Really?" He sounded surprised. "I was under the impression that you wished for me to 'come and do something to actually help'. Wasn't that how you put it. In fact," he consulted the clock in the room pointedly, "you appear to be somewhat late."

She gritted her teeth. Clearly the roulette ball had fallen into the section marked 'supercilious bastard' rather than the one marked 'responsive dancing partner.' She tried not to sigh. Or scream. Either would have worked for her.

"I was told that you had urgent house business to deal with this morning."

He raised an eyebrow.

"By whom?"

"Peregrine, if you must know. I saw him in the entrance hall as I was coming back from the library. Which, again if you must know, is the reason why I am later than usual."

She cursed herself for giving in to the temptation to explain her whereabouts to him.

" _Professor Queroz_ ," he gave the name a nasty stress, "is obviously the final authority on my commitments for the day."

Now, what did he have against Queroz, she wondered wearily, other than the obvious fact that he was the DADA teacher. She found that she didn't have the energy to push the point. He was here, apparently willing to help, and given the time pressure, she wasn't about to turn him down, no matter what sort of a mood he was in. She ran her hand through her hair.

"Shall we get on with it then," she suggested. "I need to start looking at facial masks. I think I can work on a variant of the basic moisturisers."

He nodded curtly and turned away, busying himself on the other side of the room.

The morning passed and as Hermione became more absorbed in her work, her irritation with Snape faded to the extent that her comments to him were more abstracted than irritated. Snape, concentrating in his turn, also appeared to become less touchy, so that by the time the house elves brought in a plate of sandwiches and fruit for lunch, their conversation was tolerably civil, if somewhat guarded.

As she picked through the grapes, and drank the coffee that had materialised, she could feel the pull of recollection, reminding her that once, sessions like this has been pleasant, relaxing, comfortable. She wondered when that had been lost; _how_ it had been lost, and why she should be feeling such an acute sense of regret. Snape, himself, was absorbed in some property of his own coffee. She wondered what he was thinking. Part of her hoped profoundly that he wasn't counting the days until she would be out of his hair, although, she acknowledged, that he probably was. That same part of her was wishing that they could recapture at least some of the old ease; not all of it, of course not, that would be completely inappropriate and unwanted, no doubt. But just a little part of it, maybe.

She sighed, and the noise seemed to catch Snape's attention. To cover it, she coughed a little and then recalled that she had never answered his very first question to her.

"I must say," she started, a little awkwardly, "the shampoos seem very nice." A sudden thought struck her. "Are they the samples for the men's range?"

There was a grunt which might have been a yes.

"Have you been testing them as you go along?" There was enough scientific curiosity to justify asking the question, she thought a little wickedly.

There was another grunt, this time with even less enthusiasm.

"And?" she pressed.

"And I appear to be clean," he said eventually.

 _I'll take that as a ringing endorsement then._

 **December 16th**

The coffee steamed, swirling into barely perceptible tendrils above his mug as the chill dungeon air defeated any heat from the stove. The disadvantage - one of the disadvantages, and he was hard-pressed to think of any real advantages - of this work on cosmetics was that no heat was generally required in the basic preparation; absent the usual blast furnace of burners under cauldrons, December came with a vengeance in these depths of the castle.

It was still early - very early - and frost patterned the high windows of the laboratory, fracturing the light into a diffuse haze; the ice fractals spread across the glass in an etched arc that denied any coherent view of the landscape beyond.

The sun was barely risen and what light did make it through the frost was pink-red with morning; Snape was working by candlelight at the moment, testing out some ideas that had come to him when he awoke. Combinations of scent and moisture, fruit-based exfoliates. He refused to speculate upon the reasons why his dreams now apparently encompassed the textures and combinations of skincare - and refused to consider whether this was indeed an improvement on nightmares of darkness.

The scent of coffee masked the less-than-pleasant odour of the mixture he was working on; the end result was subtle, faintly wooded with some citrus at the back of the scent, but this particular step on the route to the finished product was less likely to win prizes. The bowl in front of him was filled with a loosely cohesive dull white mixture which would, eventually, be a shaving cream.

Snape almost smiled to himself as he recalled Hermione's rather startled expression when he had reluctantly suggested adding this particular product to the lineup - she had blinked and asked what the point was; surely shaving was a chore that wizards dispensed with by magic? He had been certain that she was biting her cheek to stop herself from making some comment to the effect that only masochists - such as himself, for example - would actively choose to use a razor. They had had a similar conversation when discussing the women's products line-up, when she had included a foam in the list of products and then almost immediately dismissed it - a charm was considerably more effective.

Snape himself had had to bite his cheek to ask why, when charms were so much more effective, he had had to endure a procedure that still featured in his nightmares at the hands of her fellow students back ... then. He wondered whether Hermione had realised what he was thinking when she had added that some witches did experiment with Muggle options but, in general, not for long enough to make it worthwhile creating such products. They were, after all, short enough on time.

That discussion - on the product line up - had been almost their only conversation until yesterday. Perhaps it was the absence of students, perhaps it was simple inevitability, but at some point yesterday afternoon in the lab they had passed once again from awkwardness that bordered on hostility into a closeness that was at once more and less than friendship. Perhaps it was no more than understanding, as though some shift in atmosphere, in time, in actuality, had realigned them. As though something had cut through ten years of time without cutting through the experience of those ten years and had simply found the match again; the connection forged in an intimacy of adversity a decade ago.

Nothing particularly special had occurred - no trauma, no sudden crisis of realization; they had simply been working, and then had sat down for lunch.

A couple of comments about work had been exchanged as they started to eat, and then Hermione had fallen silent for the moment, watching him. He had assumed that she was looking for any indication that the samples he had tried were having an effect. He could, of course, have assured her on the point - he had made the damn things, after all. However, he hadn't been particularly inclined to begin to discuss whether his skin and hair felt any better than they had done with the soap he customarily used. Such a discussion would require him to admit that they did and he had rather thought she was having quite enough fun with the conversation as it was. Lunch had continued and with it the conversation ...

He picked an apple from the plate of fruit on the low table between their chairs, spinning it between his fingers idly. He considered various comments, thought of a number of things to say, then discarded each as painful small talk. He disliked the entire concept of small talk, avoiding it where possible, and regardless of that dislike was loathe in any case to begin to employ it with Hermione. They knew too much about each other to diminish that knowledge with superficiality; had known too much about the other, perhaps. He wasn't entirely certain they still knew each other, although the fundamentals were unlikely to have changed. His certainly hadn't; Hermione might, perhaps, have done - the decade after 18 would always be rather more affected by change than that after 38.

The morning's work had gone surprisingly smoothly; the irritable friction that had characterised their meetings - those that he had been unable to avoid - over the last few days appeared to have left on the Hogwarts Express, along with the students going home for Christmas. Work was a great leveller. He had been in two minds as to whether to come down to the lab today; he had work to do, marking and preparation for next term that he generally preferred to get out of the way at the start of the holidays. Once that was done, he was free to carry on with his own experiments, to follow his own research, without the constant refrain at the back of his mind that work remained to be done before the holidays were over.

Hermione seemed more relaxed, less inclined to pick a fight with him. The fact that his own more relaxed mood might have contributed to that didn't occur to him.

The coffee cooled as they sat in silence with their thoughts. A spark from the stove, crackling in the confines of the soot-black box, brought them out of their respective reveries, and Snape shook his head as he rose from his chair.

"Hermione, shall we?" he indicated the work before them with a sweep of his hand and, surprising them both, extended that hand to Hermione to pull her up out of her chair.

Before he continued with his own work, though, he peered over Hermione's shoulder to see how her work was progressing. The notes covering her desk were neat and precise, in familiar handwriting, and detailed a series of processes and ingredients. As with her other products, she had taken his original basic recipes

"Would the jasmine not work better in this sequence?" he asked idly, tracing a set of steps with a finger. Hermione glanced up at him over her shoulder, shaking her head.

"The combination doesn't work as well in the final scent. The difference in efficacy is minimal and, as this isn't exactly a cure for Crucio, the scent will matter more."

The methodical explanation, and the glance, fired the memories that had re-established themselves over the last few days. He had seen that expression, that glance, but on his own face. Looking down at him, not up.

"It's been a long time," he murmured, not quite aware that he was speaking aloud. A strange expression, almost quizzical, partly disbelieving, chased across Hermione's face. Then she nodded.

"Mmm," she said, a noncommittal sound that could almost be taken for agreement.

"Do you -" she stopped.

"Do I think about it?" he asked, and she nodded again. He paused for a moment's thought, looking carefully at her. In the end, honesty won out - she deserved it and he couldn't remember the last time he had felt even vaguely inclined to soften his responses.

"No, not really. Not until recently. It would be a waste of time and energy, and achieves nothing." He wondered whether she would expect him to ask the same but thought, perhaps, that she wouldn't. And she didn't, simply nodding yet again at his words.

That was where they had left the conversation, and lunch; work resumed in silence, a rather more comfortable silence than before, regardless of the somewhat unfinished topic. Perhaps because the conversation was unfinishable.

Another conversation had picked up in the evening, less personal and wide-ranging; Snape realised with a start, as he took a sip of coffee, that he had missed that sort of conversation - the rest of the staff were, of course, ready to converse if he chose to take them up on it. Occasionally he did so, but time and teaching and perhaps inclination had narrowed their interests such that conversations were, in general, predictable. He had missed the pleasure of a conversation that simply flowed without obvious limits or edges, that didn't inevitably return to a comfortable centre.

Snape shivered and crossed to the stove to pour himself more coffee; it was cold this morning.

 **December 17th**

By the time she opened window number seventeen of her advent calendar, Hermione was actually beginning to believe that it would be possible to meet Parvati's deadline. The departure of the students had lessened not only the distractions, but also the sense of tension in the dungeons. Today had been - well, the only word for it was "pleasant". The warm, relaxed feeling of the previous afternoon had unexpectedly spilled over, and the day had been happily productive. And she had even been able to indulge in the luxury of leaving a little early to return to her rooms and change before dinner; hitherto, in the absence of a special occasion, dinner had simply served to punctuate one long lab session.

Changing for dinner necessarily entailed a shower - and a perfect opportunity to test the latest shampoo (bladderwrack extract and rosemary oil), conditioner (chamomile and orange flower) and cleanser (palmarosa, neroli, lemon, frankincense and Dead Sea Salt). It then led on to sorting out her laundry for the House Elves and - earlier today than usual - opening the door of the advent calendar. After that came clean, if not very elaborate robes, and giving her hair a thorough brush.

Although she habitually wore her hair tied back, it was still long and bushy, which meant that "a thorough brush" was a considerable undertaking. Taking an armful she swept it all over to one side and then divided off a small section, working with firm, even strokes from the ends up to the roots. The rhythm of it was soothing, allowing her mind to drift for perhaps the first time since she had arrived at the school nine days ago. In the helter-skelter of Quidditch matches, Balls and reunions, not to mention the worry of the impending deadline, it seemed as if she had been there longer. Certainly she felt curiously unsettled; far more so than she had been expecting even allowing for the fact that ten years had passed.

She sectioned off another piece of hair.

Maybe it was the fact that nothing seemed to have changed that much; that dislocating feeling that if she turned around without thinking Neville Longbottom would be lying on the floor with Draco Malfoy and his coterie laughing in the background. Neville Longbottom ... She started on the next section of hair. Neville Longbottom who had been single-handedly responsible for the most unnerving experience of her school career. And, if she was honest, probably the one with the longest lasting effect.

Recollections came, unbidden; moments of terror and frustration, moments of desperation, and moments like today where two people worked in quiet harmony, the almost physical pleasure of understanding without needing to be told. Recollections of hands, cutting, knife blade coming down in time with the brushstrokes, hair parted by hands not her own, stroking and holding...

She tugged abruptly at a tangle.

Well, she added, the experience with the longest lasting effect on me, at least if you count ongoing adolescent daydreams. It didn't appear to have had the slightest long-term effects on the other participant. Not, of course, that that was bothering her; it was more than reasonable to expect that he wouldn't want that referred to.

She moved on to the next section, pulling with more than usual vigour.

Yes, of course, it was reasonable. But courtesy might have dictated some acknowledgment that they were more than casual acquaintances. Not that one would expect courtesy from Snape, naturally. But still.

Her throat was tight and tears were stinging the back of her eyes. She put down her hairbrush and blinked angrily at the mirror. It was wholly illogical to be upset over the predictable - expected, even - behaviour of someone who had no particular reason to behave differently. It had to be a reaction to the strangeness of the situation, to the varied resonances of days past. Yes, that was what it was. Adrenaline coupled with fatigue and stress. Once the cosmetics were delivered she would feel better.

"This is ridiculous," she said aloud, taking a deep breath. "There's absolutely no reason why he should affect me in any way."

"If you say so, dear," remarked the mirror.

Hermione jumped, and then glared at the glass. She picked up the brush and returned to work.

It was ridiculous. And there was no reason why he should affect her. No reason why the memories of old understandings and old warmth and old touches should be any more that that; memories.

She came to the end of her ritual, and shook her hair. It fluffed out, crackling around her head from the friction of the hairbrush. She put down the brush and sighed. Maybe the memories were best left buried, but there was no denying that they had worked well together for the last couple of days. Perhaps they could end up friends. Of a sort.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dinner began promisingly enough. When she arrived in the Great Hall there was a spare chair next to Queroz - as there usually was, she wryly admitted - but for once this chair was also next to Snape, which meant that, for about the first time since she arrived, she was seated between Snape and Queroz. Not that this was a cue for a flow of witty banter from Snape; he ate his dinner in as much of a silence as if she had been sitting at the other end of the table. Perhaps it was just her imagination that the silence was less hostile that on previous nights.

Queroz, on the other hand, was his habitual charming self, ensuring that her glass was full, that she was happy with her meal and asking about her day in the lab. She had merely told him that she and Snape were working on a project together; she hadn't felt up to telling him that the project was a cosmetics line for a woman's magazine. There would be far too many explanations involved.

Over the course of the evenings, Queroz had got out of her that she was a lecturer in ethics, but that she retained an interest in potions and the history of magic in general. He had, no doubt, got the received standard version of her history from the other teachers, Minerva McGonagall in particular, who had always been poor at concealing her sense of satisfaction at the heavy Gryffindor bias in the defeat of Voldemort.

The meal finished and silver coffee pots began to appear on the table, together with tisanes and a novelty teapot in the shape of Hagrid's Hut, which appeared in front of Dumbledore. Hermione was expecting Snape to simply leave the moment he was able, but instead he reached for a pot and poured himself a cup of coffee and then, to her surprise, moved slightly towards her with a half gesture. She pushed her cup towards him, and he filled it.

"Thank you," she said softly and then added, "I thought you preferred your own coffee though."

"I do," he said shortly. "However, tonight I decided to remain in the Hall and suffer the House Elves' dismal attempts."

Small plates of sweetmeats were now appearing in front of the diners. Hermione pushed one towards Snape.

"Perhaps a petit four will make it more acceptable."

His face twisted.

"I doubt it," he said. "The addition of copious quantities of sugar in any form rarely improves coffee."

He fell silent again, and Hermione was left to speculate what had prompted him to stay. her speculations did not get very far before they were interrupted by Queroz on her other side.

"Hermione, might I ask you something?"

"Yes, of course. What is it?"

For some reason, Queroz appeared to have difficulty phrasing his request. He looked down for a moment and then directly at her, with a strange seriousness.

"Hermione, I know you are interested in all things magical. I was wondering ... that is to say, I have some etchings and I wondered if you would be interested in seeing them one evening."

She blinked.

"Etchings?" she echoed, in disbelief.

Beside her, it sounded very much like Snape was choking on his coffee.

"You are joking, aren't you?" she said after a moment.

Queroz looked confused.

"Why no. Whilst I was travelling last summer I happened to pick up a very fine set of the plates used in Norton's _Ordinall of Alchimiy_. I thought you might be interested in seeing them."

Hermione had to pause another moment to be sure that he wasn't joking and then she relaxed.

"I'd love to see them," she said warmly. "I'm sorry, I thought for a moment you meant ..." Queroz was looking at her faintly quizzically, "well, it doesn't matter what I thought you meant. I'd love to see the plates."

He looked relieved.

"And perhaps, afterwards, we could have some dinner, maybe? Here, or somewhere in

Hogsmeade? Whatever you wish."

Still rapt in the idea of seventeenth century alchemical engravings, Hermione missed a knowing look passing between Minerva McGonagall and Ermengarde Sprout.

"That sounds lovely," she said, "thank you."

"When would be convenient for you?"

Hermione thought.

"I'm pretty busy in the lab for the next few days, and I'm having supper with Minerva the day after tomorrow." She turned to Snape, who was breathing normally again, but scowling at an innocent petit four. "Severus, are we likely to need to work into the evenings over the next couple of days?"

"Why ask me?" he snarled. "I can't imagine you'll let a small matter of a previous commitment get in the way of your social life. Do as you please."

He viciously pushed his chair away from the table and stalked out of the Hall. Hermione was startled by his sudden change of mood and uncomfortably aware that Queroz was waiting for an answer.

"Um," she said indecisively, still looking in the direction that Snape had taken.

"Don't let him bother you," said Queroz gently. "I'm told he's always a vicious bastard."

"Not always," she said absently, "sometimes he's quite tolerable."

"If you say so." Queroz sounded frankly sceptical.

"Look," she said, making a decision. "This project only has another four days to run. After that I won't be so distracted. Suppose we leave it until then?"

"After that will be fine," he said, "I was hoping for your undivided attention anyway. I will look forward to it and I shall be counting the days."


	7. Chapter 7

**December 18th**

Etchings.

 _Etchings._

The damn fool had invited her up to see his etchings and hadn't even had the bloody courtesy to understand what it was that he was saying. Obviously Queroz hadn't paid much attention to any form of Muggle Studies, although he did appear to be trying to study one particular Muggleborn rather more closely.

Snape was in the lab early again, and it was colder still this morning; he had transfigured his mug from stoneware to insulated steel in an effort to stop the liquid from going cold within seconds - a trick he had noticed amongst Muggles, although they had to purchase such mugs rather than simply modifying an existing one. No matter how it was achieved, the theory was sound and the coffee was kept hot.

Rather like his temper this morning. He had torn several doors from the ridiculous advent calendar that Dumbledore had given him, having forgotten entirely about it over the last few days. Ripping thin cardboard was not, however, very satisfying.

Pounding tears of frankincense, however, was much more satisfying - not least because it was also rather productive. The dried resin shattered into long shards at the first blow.

Etchings. Bloody etchings. She was probably going to see his etchings this evening - he hadn't felt inclined to hang around and watch Hermione make a date with that bloody fool of a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. To add insult to injury, the man probably knew next to nothing about the Dark Arts in practice. Where the hell had he been during the war?

The shards in the bowl were lessening now, settling and reducing as he continued the rhythm of pound-scrape-crush of pestle and mortar.

What did she see in the man? A pretty face and a pretty personality? And why did he care? She would be gone by Christmas anyway, back to family and friends and back to lecturing and they would do no more than exchange cards and the very occasional letter for a few years until even that contact dwindled to nothing.

The resin was a powder now, fine dust sparkling slightly in the early morning light.

Everything was cyclical - what had been was what would be, and he had been fine with what had been. So he would be fine with what would be.

The scent released by the resin dust probably did as much to calm him down as did the physical effort involved in reducing the resin to dust and, by the time the resin was ready to be steam distilled, Snape was rather less tense than he had been when he had woken.

As the resin needed to settle before distillation, Snape headed up to the Hall for breakfast. He wasn't entirely certain he was in the mood for company but, equally, he was surprisingly hungry.

Few enough people had made it into breakfast that Snape found a comfortable corner of the table away from conversation at which to settle and begin to sip at his second cup of coffee of the morning; a bowl of porridge cooled in front of him. The soft white of the cereal, studded with apples and raisins, was warmly scented with cinnamon and rather soothing.

He was staring absently into the bowl, stirring the mass with a spoon to cool it a little before eating, when he was aware of movement by his side and someone settling into a chair next to him. He frowned at the bowl, his head down, and tried to settle back into the vaguely warm and tired comfort of the moment before. His hair had settled in front of his face as he looked down, a curtain to shut the rest of the world away.

Only this time he was not particularly successful at shutting out the world - or the world, and this particular representative, was not sufficiently aware to realise it was being shut out.

"Morning, Severus. It's beautiful outside, the snow's frozen over. Sparkling wonderfully. Do you recommend the porridge this morning? It looks good, I was trying to decide between porridge and the bacon and eggs on my way up to the Hall."

The idiot with the etchings. The calm mood induced by crushing defenceless resin abruptly dissolved.

Apparently Queroz didn't actually require a response - or wasn't inclined to wait for one.

"What have you been doing with your hair? Been experimenting with some of your concoctions? Noticed last night that you'd been doing something - Minerva mentioned it, so I looked and do you know, she's quite right. You are looking a lot better, Severus."

Snape contemplated silence. Contemplated a monastery. Never mind the minor detail of a lack of any belief in a deity, monasticism was starting to look like a very attractive option.

"Can't believe Hermione agreed to go out with me - she's a gorgeous girl."

"Woman."

"I beg your pardon?"

"She's a woman, not a girl."

"Oh, right. Of course. I thought I'd take her into Hogsmeade, Albus mentioned a restaurant there a couple of evenings ago, I'll have to ask him what the name was again-"

"Excuse me."

Snape left the Hall abruptly for the second time in twenty-four hours, his earlier temper back in full force. The hunger that had driven him up to the Hall was edged out by a knot of annoyance and jaw-clenched irritation. Fury was mixed in there as well, but he chose not to acknowledge it.

The man was a moron.

The door to the lab thumped open and banged against the wall as he stalked down the steps to the benches, his robes swirling behind him. Hermione was already in the room, had obviously elected not to eat breakfast with the staff this morning. The upset vial and spreading liquid on the bench in front of her suggested that she had been startled by his appearance in the lab.

Her words confirmed it.

"What the hell are you doing? Do you have any idea how much work you've just messed up?

Why are you stalking into here as though you have a class of first years to terrify?"

A note of terrified anger threaded through her words. He really had scared her; an apology was in order, although he wasn't particularly inclined to voice it. He settled for an apology by action instead, moving over to her bench and cleaning up the mess he had created remotely and efficiently re-starting the process of making the shampoo sample.

Hermione stood back and stared at him as he worked silently, eventually joining in where she could. They worked together for an hour before she spoke again, when the sample was almost complete and ready again.

"Are you going to tell me what the problem is?"

A minute passed, then two. Snape stoppered the last vial of the sample and set it carefully in a stand on the side.

"Your boyfriend is more of a morning person than I am inclined to deal with. I made the mistake of going to the Hall for breakfast, not something I think I will repeat these holidays."

"My boyfriend?" Hermione's voice was genuinely puzzled.

"The Quidditch playing Romeo who invited you up to see his etchings." The words were punctuated with sarcasm. "Or do you have more than one?"

Hermione blinked at him.

"What _are_ you talking about? Peregrine's a friend, certainly, but he's hardly a boyfriend. I barely know him."

"Something which he's determined to redress, clearly. Why else do you think he invited you to peruse his etchings?" Snape was across the lab now, beginning to assemble the apparatus for distilling the frankincense.

"He doesn't know what that phrase implies for Muggles - he's just being thoughtful, he knows I'm interested in the history of alchemy. Just because you clearly don't have any inclination to indulge someone's interest, don't automatically assume that doing so indicates ulterior motives!"

"Oh, grow up. The man's only interested in indulging one thing - why else the dinner for two in Hogsmeade? Come to that, he could easily show you the etchings somewhere other than his rooms. It doesn't matter whether the man understands Muggle idioms, he's clearly capable of coming up with the same idea independently."

Hermione stared at him and Snape looked back down at the flame firing the distillation. He suspected he might just have said a little too much.

 **December 19th**

Supper with McGonagall turned out to involve more liquid than Hermione had been really anticipating. After the usual hasty lunch in the dungeons, she had worked all afternoon and then cried off early - earning a baleful glare from Snape in the process, that left her in no doubt that Gryffindor would have been several tens of house points lighter had he only been able to work out how to make it so - in order to freshen up and arrive promptly for an evening catching up with her old head of house. it would make a pleasant change from nearly two days of sulking Snape.

Minerva McGonagall's rooms were comfortably appointed and somewhat less _Scottish_ than Hermione had expected. No to mention tidy. She had never had occasion to visit the private rooms of any of the teachers whilst she was a student - except Snape's, her treacherous mind whispered. All private conversations and most detentions had taken place in the Professors' offices or classrooms. So she was surprised to find a room that owed more to the Albus Dumbledore School of Interior Design than the offices of Scotland the Gryffindor. Mismatched armchairs jostled with small tables, the pattern on the rug was worn to indecipherability, and the whole was ringed with overflowing bookshelves.

As she made herself at home, Minerva hastily threw a thick cover over a deep glass tank in the corner.

"The aftermath of sixth-year Transfiguration this afternoon," she confessed. "I would have dealt with them immediately after class, but I wanted to get back here and tidy up a little before you came."

Looking at the general chaos of the room, Hermione was glad that she hadn't seen it when it was untidy. It was a revelation to find that Minerva, fastidious and exacting in the classroom was quiet this disorganised in her personal life. Not that it should have been, of course. After all, think of Snape's rooms ...

To distract from this very activity, Hermione began to examine the paintings. One stood out, mostly for the fact that it was completely two-dimensional and almost aggressively stationary. She looked a little closer. It was a picture of a large bridge set against a mournful Scottish backdrop of bleak mountains and lowering skies.

"Ah," said Minerva. "I see you've noticed the Tay Bridge." Hermione jumped and took a step back."

"I'm sorry," she began, "I was just - um."

Minerva waved a hand.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "It was a present from my cousin William." She sighed. "A dear sweet boy, but a dreadful poet. I blame his mother for encouraging him."

Hermione blinked and made no comment.

"Now," continued Minerva, "how about a drink before the house elves fetch supper."

She was brandishing what was clearly a large bottle of whisky, something that Hermione had developed a taste for over the years. It seemed to go with the coffee habit. She accepted happily.

"Excellent," said Minerva, retrieving two large glasses from beneath a pile of what Hermione could have sworn were third-year essays. Looking round and finding a nearly clear table, she put the glasses down, filled them two-thirds full and handed one to Hermione.

"Slainte." she said taking a generous sip. "Homeopathy has no place in a distillery."

Hermione supposed not, and took a large swig of her drink.

XXXXXXXXXX

Sometime later it occurred to Hermione that the bottle contained significantly less liquid than it had when Minerva had first opened it. However, she wasn't particularly troubled by this, as Minerva had clearly given her a self-filling glass which was working very nicely, thank you. She thought that the house-elves had brought supper - at least, she thought she remembered eating something - but she didn't think that she would have been prepared to swear to it under Veritaserum.

Not that any of that mattered. She was curled up in a chair, lulled by the warmth of the fire and feeling absolutely no pain. It took her a while to register that Minerva had asked her a question.

"I'm sorry," she said vaguely, "I was miles away."

Minerva smirked.

"I could see that. The question is, who were you miles away with?"

Hermione tried to work that one out.

"What do you mean, who?" she said eventually.

"I mean who is it that has you staring into the fire like you want to toss in a pinch of Floo and call his name?"

Hermione suddenly understood, and, to her horror, felt herself redden.

"No, no, it was nothing like that. I'm just a little tired and the fire is warm and this is very good whisky."

"Nonsense," said Minerva briskly. "When a young woman drifts off like that it's either a man or scotch. And as you haven't had nearly enough to drink, it must be a man." She gave Hermione a conspiratorial smile. "And I think I can guess who it is."

Hermione felt a lurch of horror that nearly sobered her up. _Oh, please God, no_.

Minerva sat back smugly.

"It's Peregrine Queroz isn't it?"

As Hermione's brain was still thinking in terms of sibilants, she didn't immediately react.

"Uh," she said concisely.

"Peregrine Queroz? The Defence teacher." Hermione struggled for words as Minerva continued, "Come on now dear, we've all seen the way he looks at you, how he looks after you at dinner. And he has invited you up to see his etchings."

The last words finally registered properly. Good grief, not her as well. That was all she needed after yesterday's lecture from Snape.

"No. Oh no, it's nothing like that. He's just, well, he has some etchings and, well, he's asked me up to see them."

"Precisely," said Minerva triumphantly.

"No, not those sort of etchings, Real etchings. From the _Alchimal of Alderney_." She frowned. "No that's not right. Anyway, they are real etchings."

She stared at Minerva, willing her to believe, willing Snape to be wrong.

Minerva gave her a strange look.

"Hermione, the man is besotted with you. It's obvious to everyone. I'm surprised you haven't been getting hate mail from every girl with a crush above the second year."

"Oh." There wasn't a lot else she could have said. If both Snape and Minerva thought so then it was probably true.

Minerva made a clicking sound of exasperation.

"For an intelligent girl, you really can be extremely dense at times." She even sounded like a fond version of Snape, thought Hermione. "Queroz has been virtually falling over his tongue whenever you're in the room. What does he have to do? Hit you over the head with a broomstick and drag you off by your hair?"

Oh God, I've messed up again, thought Hermione, in a dizzying spirits-induced downwards mood swing.

"Probably," she said miserably. "I'm not very good at this sort of thing. You know, relationships. Dating. Subtext." She tried to make a gesture with the hand still holding her glass and stopped just before she threw whisky in Minerva's face.

 _Damn, how come she was having this conversation for the second time in as many days._

Although Minerva didn't appear to be handling it with a fit of petulance. On the contrary, she had become almost maternal.

"Is there someone else?" said Minerva gently.

"No, not really."

Minerva raised an eyebrow.

"'Not really' sounds like 'yes' to me. Is it someone from university?"

"No, not at all." The conversation was underway, now and the alcohol had not so much loosened her tongue, and loosened some of the strict controls over her mind. "There were a couple of blokes. Nice guys, really. I'm not quite certain what really went wrong. One day we were going out, and the next day we weren't and I never really worked out what happened in the meantime."

"Someone from school, then?"

Oh dear, was her brain _that_ loose?

"I - um -"

"Mr Weasley? Or perhaps Mr Potter?"

If Hermione had been able to coordinate the reflexes she would have laughed. She knew entirely too much about both her childhood friends to ever consider them as partners of any description.

"No," she said eventually, "not Harry or Ron." She took a deep breath. "Look, if you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it."

Minerva nodded, and took another drink.

"Ah, I see." She paused, and then added, "The lure of the forbidden can be very strong and very difficult to shake off, you know. But unless you do it will never leave you in peace."

Hermione hoped that her alcohol dulled muscles would fail to respond to her brain's slightly incoherent desire to freeze in horror.

Minerva had no idea. She really didn't.

Hermione took another sip of her whisky for want of something better to do and told herself again that her old Head of House had no clue. Snape was - well, he wasn't - and even if he was, he wouldn't be -and she certainly wasn't about to - and anyway it was all old history and Minerva really just didn't know.

It just _wasn't_.

 **December 20th**

Snape was, against all the odds, relaxed. Winter had drawn close again this evening, chill and cold in the icy air. He had toyed with the idea of heading for Hogsmeade and the dubious pleasures of the Three Broomsticks; it was an evening for whisky, straight or in coffee, and he was - once again - avoiding Hermione.

For once, they seemed in fact to be avoiding each other. Work had progressed swiftly in silence as they both worked in the lab this morning. She had been late and, he suspected, rather hungover. She had left yesterday with some comment about meeting with McGonagall that evening; given Minerva's taste for - and volume of - whisky, he was reasonably certain that Hermione had been feeling somewhat delicate and, had they not been developing quite such innocuous substances, would not have been inclined to go anywhere near the laboratory today.

But she had left early tonight, with no comment. Snape had tried to convince himself that she was simply tired and suffering the after effects of the whisky the night before. He hadn't convinced himself and had spent a fruitless hour furious with the universe in general, certain that she was meeting Queroz tonight. She had, after all, agreed to see the man's etchings. That she hadn't told him when she was going to see said works of art was irrelevant - it could be this evening as well as any other.

At the end of an hour he had exhausted the fit of temper, a sign that the term had been long and difficult - at the end of a holiday he could sustain that temper for days, if not weeks. A lack of subjects to exercise that temper on also made it pass faster; without the satisfaction of deducting points, there was less fuel. He still hadn't quite worked out a method of deducting points from Gryffindor for this date of Hermione's but he was working on it. Childish, admittedly, but weren't Muggles always encouraging people to embrace their 'inner child'?

In the end, winter itself had put paid to the idea of going to Hogsmeade. Snow had fallen steadily for most of the day, turning the Highlands from the faded purple and golds of autumn to a resolute white once more; Snape took a small measure of satisfaction in the knowledge that if he couldn't go to Hogsmeade then neither could Hermione and Queroz. That satisfaction was short-lived once his imagination supplied alternatives to a trip to a public eating place.

In the end, tired of feeling angry, tired of feeling somehow less than a person simply because

Hermione was viewing Queroz's etchings, and tired of the endless self-examination that she seemed to bring out in him, Snape took refuge in the medicinal effects of whisky.

A bottle of Old Ogden's that was so old it was probably Ancient Ogden's was unearthed from the back of a cupboard. Snape sniffed it cautiously on opening, as the alcohol was notorious for producing the odd unstable bottle. The mildly amusing explosions of the occasional quart of recent vintage were one thing; this had the potential to produce something rather more spectacular and considerably more dangerous.

Two glasses later, Snape was settled in front of the fire in an armchair, watching snowflakes drifting lazily past the window of his room, picked out by the soft light from the stove and a hundred or so candles scattered throughout the study. It wasn't an evening for bright, direct, light. The whisky had done what it was supposed to and Snape was as near to meditation as he had ever been, watching the patterns in the flakes, his mind finally, gloriously, empty.

He wasn't quite sure how long he had been like that - long enough, he supposed - when a knock came at the door. Albus Dumbledore. The man appeared to be magnetically attracted to Snape's whisky - or perhaps it was simply that damned all-knowing twinkle that prompted him to visit whenever Snape felt the urge to self-medicate in this way.

Snape wasn't quite sure whether he had said something to open the door - probably he had but maybe he hadn't. Either way, the result was the same. The door swung gently open and the bearded wonder entered. Hmm. Perhaps the whisky was a bit stronger than he had thought it to be.

"Severus, I thought perhaps it was time that I came down to see you. The end of term is always such a mess, isn't it? I simply haven't had the chance to get around to the staff until now. How is the Ogden's tonight?"

The man asked far too many questions - and there was something slightly odd about him tonight; it seemed as if his mouth and his words were out of sync. Snape frowned slightly, then gestured to the chair on the other side of the fireplace. The one where Hermione had sat for lunch the other day ... damn. The blank mind had been so nice whilst it lasted.

"Albus," he said, nodding as the headmaster sat down and re-arranged his beard to his satisfaction. "Some whisky?"

"Oh, I think that would be rather nice on a night like this, Severus. Shall I help myself?"

Definitely out of sync - and the twinkle seemed rather more pronounced than usual. He nodded once and watched the headmaster locate a glass with a murmured Accio, then pour himself a rather generous measure of the whisky. He sipped at it thoughtfully, holding the glass up to the light after the sip.

"Good heavens, Severus, where did you get this? I can't remember the last time I saw a whisky of this vintage."

"Back there, somewhere." Snape gestured in the direction of his cupboard. "Not sure where it came from. Does it matter?"

"No, not at all. I suspect it of belonging to your predecessor - or perhaps her predecessor, given its age. Amazing what you can find lurking in the depths of this school, waiting to be discovered, isn't it? All sorts of things, and not all of them what they seem at times."

Dumbledore was looking at him meaningfully. Snape wasn't inclined to rise to the bait, but it seemed that his subconscious had other ideas, and rather more control at the moment.

"I'm not sure she wants to be discovered, Albus." Oh good grief, had he actually said that? Snape put the whisky down carefully, although the table did seem to have moved slightly further from his reach than he recalled. He caught the glass before it fell, though, and positioned it more carefully on the low chestnut table. Perhaps the next sip should wait - until next year. Or next century.

"Sometimes things are found, whether they want to be or not."

"In this instance, I think someone else has found her. Or perhaps his etchings have." Now he sounded petulant, and he really didn't like that.

"Perhaps he has nothing more than a general sense of location; I think he may be looking at the wrong thing - smoke and mirrors, if you will."

Snape picked up the whisky again - to hell with it. He needed more alcohol if he was going to deal with Dumbledore when he was in this sort of frame of mind. Unsubtly cryptic.

"It really doesn't matter what he's looking at, Albus, or whether he's found anything. It's not about him; the choice is hers. It's always been hers. Since you've started this remarkably maudlin conversation, you may as well hear the rest of it. It doesn't matter what I think - it only matters what she thinks; and I can tell you that she doesn't think of me. Oh, don't shake your head, you know she doesn't. I'm the Potions Professor, the one she had an ... unfortunate incident with some years back. The one she's having to work with, even though she doesn't really want to. I know, I know, she doesn't hate me - I'm spared that at least. Perhaps she even respects me, who knows? But that's all there is. And I have had far, far, too much to drink."

Snape stared at the whisky, amber gold and fractured firelight in his glass, and waited for the words of wisdom - the platitudes, the comments, the advice. The lemon drops.

In the silence the fire chattered in the stove, bark and sap swelling and cracking in the heat, embers shifting and settling with harsh sighs and leaping flames.

Finally, just before Snape looked up from his glass to check that Dumbledore hadn't left in the middle of his soliloquy, he heard a soft chuckle.

"Then there's really nothing more for me to say, is there?" There was an odd emphasis on the word 'me', but Snape dismissed it. The fire seemed oddly out of focus now, the flames blurred. His hearing was probably equally blurred, but he looked up now to check.

Dumbledore had left, after all.


	8. Chapter 8

**December 20th**

Snape was, against all the odds, relaxed. Winter had drawn close again this evening, chill and cold in the icy air. He had toyed with the idea of heading for Hogsmeade and the dubious pleasures of the Three Broomsticks; it was an evening for whisky, straight or in coffee, and he was - once again - avoiding Hermione.

For once, they seemed in fact to be avoiding each other. Work had progressed swiftly in silence as they both worked in the lab this morning. She had been late and, he suspected, rather hungover. She had left yesterday with some comment about meeting with McGonagall that evening; given Minerva's taste for - and volume of - whisky, he was reasonably certain that Hermione had been feeling somewhat delicate and, had they not been developing quite such innocuous substances, would not have been inclined to go anywhere near the laboratory today.

But she had left early tonight, with no comment. Snape had tried to convince himself that she was simply tired and suffering the after effects of the whisky the night before. He hadn't convinced himself and had spent a fruitless hour furious with the universe in general, certain that she was meeting Queroz tonight. She had, after all, agreed to see the man's etchings. That she hadn't told him when she was going to see said works of art was irrelevant - it could be this evening as well as any other.

At the end of an hour he had exhausted the fit of temper, a sign that the term had been long and difficult - at the end of a holiday he could sustain that temper for days, if not weeks. A lack of subjects to exercise that temper on also made it pass faster; without the satisfaction of deducting points, there was less fuel. He still hadn't quite worked out a method of deducting points from Gryffindor for this date of Hermione's but he was working on it. Childish, admittedly, but weren't Muggles always encouraging people to embrace their 'inner child'?

In the end, winter itself had put paid to the idea of going to Hogsmeade. Snow had fallen steadily for most of the day, turning the Highlands from the faded purple and golds of autumn to a resolute white once more; Snape took a small measure of satisfaction in the knowledge that if he couldn't go to Hogsmeade then neither could Hermione and Queroz. That satisfaction was short-lived once his imagination supplied alternatives to a trip to a public eating place.

In the end, tired of feeling angry, tired of feeling somehow less than a person simply because

Hermione was viewing Queroz's etchings, and tired of the endless self-examination that she seemed to bring out in him, Snape took refuge in the medicinal effects of whisky.

A bottle of Old Ogden's that was so old it was probably Ancient Ogden's was unearthed from the back of a cupboard. Snape sniffed it cautiously on opening, as the alcohol was notorious for producing the odd unstable bottle. The mildly amusing explosions of the occasional quart of recent vintage were one thing; this had the potential to produce something rather more spectacular and considerably more dangerous.

Two glasses later, Snape was settled in front of the fire in an armchair, watching snowflakes drifting lazily past the window of his room, picked out by the soft light from the stove and a hundred or so candles scattered throughout the study. It wasn't an evening for bright, direct, light. The whisky had done what it was supposed to and Snape was as near to meditation as he had ever been, watching the patterns in the flakes, his mind finally, gloriously, empty.

He wasn't quite sure how long he had been like that - long enough, he supposed - when a knock came at the door. Albus Dumbledore. The man appeared to be magnetically attracted to Snape's whisky - or perhaps it was simply that damned all-knowing twinkle that prompted him to visit whenever Snape felt the urge to self-medicate in this way.

Snape wasn't quite sure whether he had said something to open the door - probably he had but maybe he hadn't. Either way, the result was the same. The door swung gently open and the bearded wonder entered. Hmm. Perhaps the whisky was a bit stronger than he had thought it to be.

"Severus, I thought perhaps it was time that I came down to see you. The end of term is always such a mess, isn't it? I simply haven't had the chance to get around to the staff until now. How is the Ogden's tonight?"

The man asked far too many questions - and there was something slightly odd about him tonight; it seemed as if his mouth and his words were out of sync. Snape frowned slightly, then gestured to the chair on the other side of the fireplace. The one where Hermione had sat for lunch the other day ... damn. The blank mind had been so nice whilst it lasted.

"Albus," he said, nodding as the headmaster sat down and re-arranged his beard to his satisfaction. "Some whisky?"

"Oh, I think that would be rather nice on a night like this, Severus. Shall I help myself?"

Definitely out of sync - and the twinkle seemed rather more pronounced than usual. He nodded once and watched the headmaster locate a glass with a murmured Accio, then pour himself a rather generous measure of the whisky. He sipped at it thoughtfully, holding the glass up to the light after the sip.

"Good heavens, Severus, where did you get this? I can't remember the last time I saw a whisky of this vintage."

"Back there, somewhere." Snape gestured in the direction of his cupboard. "Not sure where it came from. Does it matter?"

"No, not at all. I suspect it of belonging to your predecessor - or perhaps her predecessor, given its age. Amazing what you can find lurking in the depths of this school, waiting to be discovered, isn't it? All sorts of things, and not all of them what they seem at times."

Dumbledore was looking at him meaningfully. Snape wasn't inclined to rise to the bait, but it seemed that his subconscious had other ideas, and rather more control at the moment.

"I'm not sure she wants to be discovered, Albus." Oh good grief, had he actually said that? Snape put the whisky down carefully, although the table did seem to have moved slightly further from his reach than he recalled. He caught the glass before it fell, though, and positioned it more carefully on the low chestnut table. Perhaps the next sip should wait - until next year. Or next century.

"Sometimes things are found, whether they want to be or not."

"In this instance, I think someone else has found her. Or perhaps his etchings have." Now he sounded petulant, and he really didn't like that.

"Perhaps he has nothing more than a general sense of location; I think he may be looking at the wrong thing - smoke and mirrors, if you will."

Snape picked up the whisky again - to hell with it. He needed more alcohol if he was going to deal with Dumbledore when he was in this sort of frame of mind. Unsubtly cryptic.

"It really doesn't matter what he's looking at, Albus, or whether he's found anything. It's not about him; the choice is hers. It's always been hers. Since you've started this remarkably maudlin conversation, you may as well hear the rest of it. It doesn't matter what I think - it only matters what she thinks; and I can tell you that she doesn't think of me. Oh, don't shake your head, you know she doesn't. I'm the Potions Professor, the one she had an ... unfortunate incident with some years back. The one she's having to work with, even though she doesn't really want to. I know, I know, she doesn't hate me - I'm spared that at least. Perhaps she even respects me, who knows? But that's all there is. And I have had far, far, too much to drink."

Snape stared at the whisky, amber gold and fractured firelight in his glass, and waited for the words of wisdom - the platitudes, the comments, the advice. The lemon drops.

In the silence the fire chattered in the stove, bark and sap swelling and cracking in the heat, embers shifting and settling with harsh sighs and leaping flames.

Finally, just before Snape looked up from his glass to check that Dumbledore hadn't left in the middle of his soliloquy, he heard a soft chuckle.

"Then there's really nothing more for me to say, is there?" There was an odd emphasis on the word 'me', but Snape dismissed it. The fire seemed oddly out of focus now, the flames blurred. His hearing was probably equally blurred, but he looked up now to check.

Dumbledore had left, after all.

 **December 21st**

For some reason, snow always made Hermione feel better.

She had, of course, long outgrown the childish romance of it; she was more than aware of the adult mundanities of cold and wet, chills and falls, and the inevitable disruptions and delays of living in a country that seemed to regard truly seasonable weather as an affront to its national dignity. All that being said, she still sat fascinated as the layer of white settled over the land, covering the dirt and the mud and the imperfections, burying deep the detritus of living and leaving a blank canvas upon which it might be possible to write anything.

She snorted at her fanciful thoughts.

It would take more than the weather and some pretty landscaping to deal with her current problem. Which could be delineated in two words: Peregrine Queroz.

Having spared him little or no serious thought over the past weeks, the conversations with

Minerva and Snape now virtually guaranteed him a private box in the auditorium of her mind.

Whilst she had been prepared to attribute Snape's remarks to - well, him being Snape, more or less - to have it confirmed by Minerva had been a nasty shock. Or at least it had been once she had metabolised the last of Minerva's whisky and her full range of mental faculties came back into play.

She had been grateful for Snape's silence in the lab for once; at least he hadn't interrupted the shifting spectrum of hungover introspection which had occupied the better part of the last two days. In fact, he himself had seemed a little - fragile - today. She had wondered why, but had decided that an enquiry would not be well received.

She sighed.

There was no help for it; she was going to have to face him sometime.

Hermione Granger might be clueless when it came to her own relationships, but she was not dishonest. Once her attention had been drawn to things she was not one to play games.

Which meant that Queroz would need to be set straight on a few things.

In the end, she had the opportunity sooner than she expected. Although the greater part of the student body had left for the holidays, the few residents of the castle were all gathering in the Great Hall for dinner. The weather was bad enough to discourage Hagrid from venturing further than was absolutely necessary.

Snape was already sitting in his place at the table when she entered. He still looked out of sorts, she thought - which was consistent with his demeanour all day - but he appeared considerably less fragile than he had first thing. He was now hunched in his chair and was staring at his plate as if it contained hazardous material. He didn't acknowledge Hermione as she made her way past, and to the empty chair, situated, as always, next to Queroz.

She felt her heart sink. Having sat next to him for nearly two weeks without a tremor, she was now afflicted by dreadful butterflies.

Queroz sniled his usual welcoming smile, and stood to draw her chair back for her. Hermione didn't dare look in either Minerva or Snape's direction, although she suspected the latter would suppressed any reaction even if a hippgriff had come rampaging unexpectedly through the Hall.

"Good evening, Hermione," he said, his soft, slightly accented voice gentle. "Isn't it a dreadful evening."

She nodded, moving uncomfortably in her chair under the pretence of getting settled.

"Fortunately the house-elves have prepared something warm for us." On cue a bowl of thick stew appeared in front of her. Hermione wished she currently had the appetite for it. Queroz looked at her quizically for a moment. "Are you feeling well, Hermione? You haven't taken a chill working in the dungeons for so long?'

She rallied herself.

"No, I'm fine. Just a little - tired, That's all."

He smiled.

"You need an evening off," he said. "You're working too hard." He paused. "There's too much snow to go out, and it's too cold to go back to the dungeons. Why don't you come up to my rooms, you can see the plates and I could make some good coffee for you."

Oh hell, she thought. This was the moment, It wasn't how she had planned it. Insofar as there were plans as such. It had been more a speculation heavily overlaid with pious hope. It had certainly not involved being in a public place, much less dinner in the Great Hall with just about everyone present who possibly could be.

She put down her fork, not that she had truly begun to use it anyway.

"Peregrine," she began carefully, "you know that I like you very much and I really would be interested in seeing the printing plates, but - um," she hesitated and then decided simply to plough on. There was little to be gained in trying for delicacy in this sort of situation. It was like trying to tactfully remove sticking plaster. She took a deep breath. "You should know that I'm not really interested in a relationship at the moment. It isn't you - you're a very nice person, but I have to be honest with you. I think you want something from me that I'm not able to give."

 _There. It was said._

Queroz was silent for a while.

"Hermione, my dear," he said eventually. "I won't say that I wasn't interested in getting to know you better. You are a fascinating and beautiful young woman. But what you have said isn't really a surprise to me. I have always known that although you were talking to me, your heart was looking elsewhere. I sincerely wich it could have been different." He took her hand and raised it to his lips. "You are still welcome to see my etchings whenever you wish if they would interest you. Now, if you will excuse me."

He stood gracefully and left the Hall, leaving a small amount of stew in the base of the bowl.

Hermione let out a breath.

Damn, she thought viciously. Why couldn't I have fallen for him? He's good looking, he's charming and attentive, he worries that I might be ill or that I'm working too hard and even after I dump him he manages to be sweet and civilised and poetical about it. He's everything that any woman could want. So how come I don't? Hell, even he thinks that there's someone else, and he's only known me for five minutes.

The fact that he was right and that that was something else that she had to deal with was not improving her mood right now.

XXXXXXXXXX

Things had come to a pretty pass, thought Hermione, when the appearence of Parvati Patil was regarded as any kind of a reprieve.

She had just left the Great Hall and was on her way back to her rooms when Ms Magic herself appeared, clearly perturbed in pink. Her cloak was as vivid as ever, but was looking decidedly the worse for the weather. She was pale, and her glossy black hair was escaping from whatever charms were supposed to be holding it immaculate.

Hermione did a double take.

"Parvati, what on earth are you doing here? We weren't expecting you until tomorrow."

Parvati self-consciously straightened her cloak.

"Well," she said, with a slightly brittle cheeriness, "tomorrow's the big day isn't it. When I get my line delivered." Hermione tried not to bristle at the emphasis on 'my'. "I thought I'd pop up here a bit early and check that everything's on track."

She seemed to be recovering her poise very quickly, and Hermione wondered if she'd imagined the bedraggled air that she had first seen.

Parvati was getting into her stride.

"I've got a room in the darlingest little inn in Hogsmeade, but I've had to walk from the edge of the school grounds. Honestly, I do think that Albus is a bit silly keeping the wards up all this time after You-Know-Who has gone." She waved a hand. "So, everything is fine is it?"

Hermione was irritated, both by the suggestion that she might not have kept to her deadline and by the fact that her evening had been interrupted.

"Yes, everything is on track, Parvati. Why don't you go back to Hogsmeade and tomorrow we'll have everything boxed and labelled for you."

It was not proximity to Queroz that had had an effect on her, she thought.

"But now that I'm here, couldn't I just have a quick sneak preview.

Afterwards, Hermione thought that she agreed as much to avoid a continuance of the wheedling little-girl tone, than anything else. Wearily, she led Parvati towards the dungeons.

Arriving there, she was surprised to find the wards lowered, and even more surprised to find Snape inside, apparently working on something. He looked even less thrilled to see Parvati than Hermione had been.

"Parvati came to see how we were getting on," she explained lamely.

Snape simply glared. Parvati, however, was staring at Snape, eyes wide with surprise. Visibly recovering, she moved closer to him and looked into the contents of his cauldron.

"Ooh," she said girlishly, "is that for me?"

"No," said Snape shortly and reached out a hand to pick up a pestle containing something ground to powder.

Parvati eyed him for a moment longer. To distract her Hermione fetched the first box of samples. Parvati picked her way through them, unscrewing here, sniffing there, poking a finger into a neatly-labelled jar every now and then. Although she was asking questions, it seemed to Hermione that her attention was was closely focussed on Snape.

Hermione set her jaw in annoyance. What was so bloody fascinating about him to Parvati anyway?

Parvati put the last jar down with a murmur of approval and sidled back to where Snape was still working.

"So, Professor," she said sweetly, "won't you explain what you're doing? It looks fascinating."

Hermione could feel the muscles tighten at the back of her neck. She began to replace the jars and bottles very noisily.

"Then it's a pity that your fascination didn't begin earlier, Miss Patil. When you were at school and in class, for example. There is little prospect of you now comprehending the process." Snape didn't even look at her.

Parvati's eyes glittered.

"Have you been testing any of these potions as you go along, Professor?"

"They've all been fully tested," he replied without expression.

"I thought so," she purred. "It shows, you know. You're so clever. I would never have thought of a range for wizards."

Parvati laid a hand on Snape's arm. Hermione could have sworn that he froze in shock.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Professor."

And planting a light kiss on his cheek she was gone. She didn't bother to acknowledge Hermione.

The tightness at the back of Hermione's head had now met with the tightness at the front and both were now developing into a full blown headache. Irrational fury almost left her unable to speak.

"If there's nothing more, _Professor_ ," she stressed nastily, "I'll leave you to your genius."

 **December 22nd**

The first time in too many bloody years that he was on the receiving end (any end, come to that) of a kiss, and it had to be from Parvati Patil. Ms Pink. Pinker than pink. What in the name of ... Snape couldn't think. Still horror-struck by the previous evening's events, and dreading this morning when she would turn up in the laboratory again.

He hadn't slept - unusual these days, even if he slept less than most people would consider appropriate. Instead, he had tried to sublimate confusion and irritation and complete bafflement in work, burying himself in the laboratory with candles and starlight to refine and complete the last of the production samples in the men's range.

The evening had even begun with some promise - Hermione had clearly finally taken the point, if Queroz's behaviour at dinner had been anything to go by. The dregs of the

Dumbledore-induced hangover had still been hovering at the edge of his consciousness at the start of the meal but the scrape of chair legs against stone and the abrupt exit of Queroz from the hall had cleared his head surprisingly efficiently. Hermione had been staring into the stew remaining in her bowl as though it held the answers to ... well, to something. Fulcanelli's Fourth Law of Alchemy, perhaps.

He had, briefly, debated moving over to talk to her but something held him back - the public setting, certainly, but more than that. He rather thought that she would see any words from him as gloating, underlining the fact that she hadn't understood what Queroz had intended. He was well-enough aware of his shortcomings not to fool himself that he could pull off the

"well-intended" tone of voice that might have been his only hope of succeeding in not making her either more upset or furiously angry.

Snape interrupted his thoughts now for a moment, breaking off the constant repeating of last night in his mind, to concentrate on the final preparations of the general-purpose moisturiser that he had been completing. The off-white cream, shot through with small flecks of purple, was almost solid in the bowl and required some effort to smooth through with the spatula. Eventually he stopped, a soft sigh of tiredness and strain punctuating the moment; the consistency and texture the cream was finally adequate for his purposes. He pulled a wry smile - it was perfect, which was what he considered to be adequate for his purposes.

He stared into the bowl a little longer, until the white and purple began to mingle in his unfocused sight, thinking of nothing and enjoying the respite. Then, abruptly, he ran a finger through the cream, scooping a small amount up from the bowl. He frowned, wondering ...

A few steps brought him to his bathroom and to the mirror there. He was still frowning as he examined his reflection closely; he couldn't recall the last time he'd actually bothered to look at his face, other than in the abstract when he shaved. Then, all he looked at were the angles and planes, checking that he'd accomplished the task, rather than specifically examining the reflection. Now, he looked. After a minute or so he simply shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders. He smoothed the cream onto his face rather than waste the product, working it into the skin and watching the reflection again. He had thought that, perhaps, the products had done something to his face - something that might have made Ms Patil behave quite so strangely last night. Something that might account for the odd comments from McGonagall and, now he thought about it, from Queroz a few days ago.

But the face that stared back from the mirror was the same one that always faced him. Perhaps his skin and hair were less of a mess than usual; the endless testing of moisturisers and conditioners and cleansers and shaving balms was bound to have had some effect, after all. But that was all - the face itself was unchanged, still long and unprepossessing. Snape turned from the mirror in disgust. He was wasting time; Ms Pink had no doubt simply had too much to drink last night, or something similar.

When he stepped back into the laboratory, Hermione had arrived. She glanced up from her own last-minute details, a line-up of bottles and pots in front of her.

"Good morning."

Their voices echoed in the chill air at the same time, and similar small smiles tugged at their faces as they acknowledged the quiet amusement in the moment. Hermione settled back to work and Snape crossed to the stove; it was past time for coffee this morning.

The familiar routine was soothing, filling the base of the pot with water, scooping coffee into the holder and fitting the parts of the pot together. He sat the pot on the stove and returned to his bench, intent on finishing the labels needed for his own line-up of bottles and pots.

The scent of coffee and the coughing of the pot interrupted him shortly afterwards; he placed a steaming mug in front of Hermione and stood beside her for a moment. She murmured her thanks without stopping her work, filling and tapping off the few remaining empty bottles in front of her.

When the last one was full and labelled she yawned and stretched, arching backward and brushing against him as she did so. She started and looked round and up at him; Snape hadn't moved and she stared up at him for a moment or two. To his unshown pleasure, she didn't immediately pull her stool forwards away from him. Instead, she picked up the coffee mug and took a sip, holding it in both hands - probably trying to warm hands cramped with cold and meticulous work.

"After all this - I'm almost surprised we've finished on time. There were points I didn't think we'd make it, that we would have a pink howling dervish in the laboratory today screaming ruin and trauma."

"Don't insult dervishes," replied Snape drily.

"Let me guess, some of your relatives are dervishes?" The grin was there in full bloom in the tone of her voice even if she had somewhere in the last ten years managed to master the art of the poker face.

"What gave it away?" His tone was drier still and now she did grin; laughed in fact, and smiled up at him. Oh, he'd missed this.

He was about to say something - later, he couldn't remember what, although he had an idea of the general substance of what was in his mind at the time - when the door opened and the pink dervish herself whirled into the room.

"Darlings! Severus, you've done it! Oh, these are exquisite - tell me all about them!"

Parvati Patil and her exclamation marks had wrapped themselves around Snape, barely acknowledging Hermione who, in turn, stood to one side. Poker face gone, she was definitely grinning at his discomfiture this morning.

The morning seemed endless, even though it could not have taken more than a couple of hours to satisfy Ms Patil's questions and deflect her gushing. She left, at long, long, last, with a box full of the potions and the accompanying notes and recipes for mass production. Snape could almost hear her voice still ringing in his ears and shuddered at the recollection of her sotto voice invitation to dinner, lunch, whatever, next time he was in London.

The door from the school slammed shut at last.

"I thought she was married?"

He thought he'd simply thought the question, but Hermione answered. "Some people don't let details like that get in the way."

"I do."

Hermione nodded absently, thoughts elsewhere. No doubt she was anxious to get back to London herself, with Christmas in a couple of days. Her family, if no-one else, would be expecting her, of course. Snape drew in a short breath and talked himself out of asking her whether she would stay. There was no sense in inviting rejection, after all.

"I suppose you'll be leaving now that - that - is out of the way?"

He waited for an answer, his question echoing in the hallway where they stood.

"Um - well, I hadn't ..." Hermione's voice trailed off as though the answer were more complex than a simple "yes".

"Ah, Hermione, Severus. How nice to see you both here - have you seen off Ms Patil successfully?" Snape quirked a small smile against his better judgement; the headmaster's phrasing was rather nicely ambiguous. Which, to be fair, was probably a useful assessment of the headmaster himself.

Dumbledore took amused silence for an affirmative and chuckled.

"Good, good. Now, Hermione, I'm glad I caught you - I understand that your parents are away at the moment?" He paused, then continued at Hermione's startled nod. Snape raised an eyebrow - surely she couldn't be surprised at the headmaster knowing her family's whereabouts?

"Excellent - then perhaps you would do us the honour of staying at Hogwarts this Christmas? It might not be same as home but I'm sure we can find something to entertain you." Snape was uncomfortably aware that Dumbledore's gaze had shifted from Hermione to himself, and almost missed Hermione's pleased acceptance. He didn't, however, miss her glance at him as she accepted.


	9. Chapter 9

**December 23rd**

Hermione woke up, long before dawn had even thought about breaking, with the distinct feeling that there was something odd about the day. After a moment she realised that it was the fact that she didn't have to pull herself out of bed and down to the dungeons in order to do as much work as humanly possible on face creams and body lotions.

In that case, she thought happily, she would treat herself to a long awaited lie in, followed by a lazy bath and a late breakfast. She snuggled down under the covers again, closed her eyes, stretched her toes and prepared herself for a nice long sleep, fortified by happy thoughts of another Christmas at Hogwarts.

Nothing happened.

Too many early mornings meant that her brain was automatically getting itself into gear, despite her body's fervent desire to return to somnolence.

 _Bloody hell._

This just wasn't fair. She lay there a few moments longer, willing herself sternly, but unsuccessfully, to go back to sleep until the tension of trying to relax made her muscles begin to cramp. Sighing, she rolled over onto her back and stretched fully. Eyes still closed, she tried to let her mind drift.

Predictably, it drifted towards the lower reaches of the castle. To the dungeons if one was going to be accurate about it. To the inhabitant of those dungeons if one was going to be accurate _and_ honest about it.

And, even more specifically, the events of the preceding day. Of course, there had been the final delivery of the fruits of their joint penance to the Magenta Menace, but that wasn't what she was thinking about.

She was recalling that fragment of conversation, when, for one unguarded moment, she thought that something might have remained of that long, bizarre, wonderful final year. That perfect and unspoken understanding, relaxed and unforced, something unlooked for yet secretly desired and regretted. An instant in non-time when she could almost have reached up and run a finger down his face, tracing the familiar lines and angles, touching him just so, knowing how his body would respond almost as well as if it had been her own. And he would not have stopped her. At least, he probably wouldn't have stopped her. Well, she didn't _think_ he would have stopped her. Say rather that he might have tolerated it. And she would never know what would have happened because Parvati - with a gift for timing that didn't appear to have improved since school - had erupted into the room, and the time had gone.

She sighed.

She might as well be realistic about this, she thought. It must have been the relief of finishing. Or simple inattention. Or maybe the recent close proximity of Parvati had made her presence seem more attractive to him. She gave a small snort. What a tribute: _Marginally less distasteful than Parvati Patil._

And yet, there had been that moment when they touched and he hadn't pulled away from her. Certainly he hadn't shied away from her as he had from Parvati as she stalked him round the laboratory for two hours, peppering him with questions about their work. Hermione grinned into the darkness, momentarily distracted by the mental image. Watching Snape evade the Predatory Patil had almost been worth the mind-numbing stress of the last two weeks. Her grin faded then, as she remembered the attention - attention? Why not call it what it was: fawning adulation - that Parvati had lavished on Snape. Snape for heaven's sake. The man whose classes she couldn't leave fast enough. The man she had complained about for seven solid years. The miserable, sarcastic, ugly, greasy, evil bastard. That Snape.

She wriggled under the sheets, unreasonably put out. How come Parvati had taken such a sudden liking to him anyway? It wasn't as if he had substantially changed since they were at school. He had been testing the products, so naturally his hair was in better condition and his skin was somewhat clearer - she felt a certain satisfaction that he had finally been forced to stop using that wretched all-purpose household soap for his personal hygiene. Irritation gave way to a small wince at the memory of the constant sticky residue on her hair and skin, that no amount of rinsing with hot water seemed to quite clear. And she had to admit that not living in constant fear of discovery and torture would loosen anyone up a little - theoretically, at least - but he was still the Snape she remembered from school.

The Snape who criticised her work. Who totally ignored her if he was concentrating on something else. Who didn't enquire solicitously about her day. Who didn't hold her chair or fill her glass for her. Who let her get on with things without asking after her progress. Who knew how she liked her work space organised and how she took her coffee. Who knew what she would find funny and what would annoy her. Who could use that knowledge to aggravating effect when he wanted to.

The Snape who saw no reason to modify his behaviour to accommodate anyone else's notions of acceptability, and who, consequently, did not expect anyone else to do so either.

The Snape with whom she could be herself.

Yes. He was _exactly_ the Snape that she remembered from school.

Oh dear.

Hermione raised her head and hit it several times on the pillow as if that would change the reality of the situation. The knowledge that she had been trying to bury beneath work, reunions, Queroz and, latterly, Minerva's whisky came marching to the forefront of her brain, set up camp and stubbornly refused to move.

She was going to have to face Snape. Of course, he would laugh, or sneer, or both and it would be a disaster, but having reached the conclusion, she couldn't just ignore it. Hermione Granger had not been sorted into Gryffindor for nothing.

The prospect made her feel slightly sick.

Abandoning the idea of a lie in, Hermione got out of bed. Somewhere in the middle of her bout of introspection the fires had been lit in her rooms, so she was not cold. She found her coffee pot - identical to Snape's, and one of the "essential items" that she had brought from home - and filled the bottom with water.

By the time that the pot was ready, she had managed to have a quick shower - so much for the long bath idea - and get dressed. Pouring the coffee, she wandered over to the advent calendar, propped up on one of the sets of bookshelves in the room. The angel was looking a little worse for wear now, graceful outlines disrupted by little cardboard doors, and slivers of different pictures. She located number twenty-three and teased open the door with some difficulty; she didn't like to tear the things and two weeks of intensive potions work had left her with extremely short nails.

Inside, three gorgeously robed men were carrying jewelled boxes. The Magi bringing gifts - pre-birth in this case - to the infant Christ. Which reminded her of another, more prosaic fact; Parvati's timescale had left her no time to buy any Christmas presents whatsoever.

Which meant that the confrontation of Snape would have to be temporarily postponed. It was, Hermione thought, something of a toss-up which was the preferable option; a "talk" with Snape, or a morning in Hogsmeade two days before Christmas. Nevertheless, the shopping had to be done, and it was probably better that it should be done and sent off before she ran the risk of having to beat a hasty retreat from the castle.

Sipping her coffee, she sat down to make a list. The usual suspects came at the top - Harry, Ron, Ginny, Molly and Arthur Weasley, Dumbledore. Minerva. Fortunately, she had been able to arrange for her parents' present to arrive _poste restante_ at St Helena. She couldn't imagine that the Ministry would be very amused at having to obliviate an entire Muggle cruise ship because an English barn owl had shown up in the West Indies carrying a package.

Which left the question of Snape. The minor question as opposed to the major question. Did she buy him a Christmas present? She chewed her quill. After some more deliberation she wrote "Severus" on her list. She could always leave the present with Dumbledore if there was a problem. As for what this hypothetical present might be; she decided that she would just wander round Hogsmeade and hope that inspiration struck.

Yes, she thought, that was the right way round. Get the presents sorted out, and cards and letters sent, and tackle Snape when that was off her mind. Later today, perhaps. Or maybe tomorrow. She might be a Gryffindor, but she had learnt over the years that occasionally discretion was the better part of valour. And sometimes procrastination was the better part of discretion. This definitely seemed like one of those times.

Satisfied with her decision, she headed for breakfast.

 **December 24th**

Leisure was vastly overrated. One day of it, and Snape was already irritated with the world in general; he refused to consider that his irritation might have less to do with leisure and more to do with the fact that he hadn't seen Hermione in more than twenty-four hours, for the first time in weeks.

She was still at Hogwarts, of course. She had accepted Dumbledore's invitation, and she had looked at him, and he was still trying to work out what it was that she had meant by that look. Was she checking to see whether he minded? Whether he was remotely interested? Whether he was going to object?

It was these moments that reminded him that it had been ten years since he had known her as well as himself; ten years in which she had changed, grown up. He no longer knew exactly what was going through her mind at a glance. All of which made things more interesting and more complex. If he had still known her that well, perhaps all of this would have been moot. She would not have changed, would not have grown and would be infinitely less interesting. She wouldn't be Hermione.

All of which introspection achieved nothing and was frankly tedious; Snape was getting bored with himself and the constant refrain of moments circling in his mind. It was time to go and do something constructive.

He had spent the previous day in London, somewhat unexpectedly. He had gone wandering through the school corridors around mid-morning, having had coffee in his rooms from sheer perversity, and discovered eventually that Hermione had gone into Hogsmeade.

He first reaction was to follow her; he needed to get some Christmas presents, after all. It was not, perhaps, his favourite chore but he generally found something for Dumbledore and McGonagall at the least. A long time ago, he had found something for Hermione as well.

Then caution drew him back; if he went into Hogsmeade, he would almost certainly run into Hermione. Would she think that he was deliberately following her? More deliberations, more considerations, until he was halfway to the village and abruptly apparated to London.

London had, on reflection, not been one of the wiser choices of his life. The streets were crowded - Muggle and wizarding streets alike - with people rushing without obvious purpose and with a heightened note of hysteria in the air. In the end he had accomplished his shopping more by luck than by design and the results, wrapped in a paper shot with silver, sat on his desk at the moment.

Snape stared at the small pile of gifts, willing his mind to silence, to simply be. Coffee grew cold in the mug in his hands until he came to sip it and grimaced. He pulled himself out of his chair, trying to pull himself from frustration and irritation as well, wondering whether it was appropriate to see if Hermione was still in the castle, and settled for pouring himself another coffee.

He had just put the pot down on the stove again when a knock sounded at the door. He glanced at it, squashed the involuntary hope and put the mug down next to the stove. Crossing to the door, he opened it to find Hermione standing outside.

Startled, he simply looked at her for a moment until a strange expression crossed her face; mingled fear and resolve.

"May I come in?"

He nodded without words and stepped back to let her in.

"I thought I should knock this time - we're not working on the project any more and I wasn't sure whether you would be here and-"

She was nervous; that tic of rambling was one thing that hadn't changed. Snape lifted his mug and quirked an eyebrow at her, suddenly calmer in the face of her lack of composure. He had no idea why she was nervous but it was somehow comforting that she wasn't standing in his rooms in a state of bland assurance. Hermione stopped talking abruptly, apparently now aware of the words tumbling faster and faster.

"Coffee?"

She nodded and he poured another mug for her, passing it to her as they stood in front of the stove. Her fingers brushed the back of his as she took the mug; he had some difficulty controlling a shiver.

So, apparently, did Hermione - or was that wishful thinking?

Snape, for the first time in too many years, indulged in wishful thinking and turned to face Hermione. She looked up at him as he stood in front of her and he thought he could see the questions forming; the fear he had seen in her at the door was gone now.

"Would you like to go for a walk?"

That hadn't been the question he had intended asking; that had been rather more direct and to the point, but somewhere between intention and action the words had changed.

"Uh - yes. Yes, I'd like that." Hermione seemed as startled by he was by his own question. "Let me get my coat."

Suddenly it seemed imperative not to let her out of his sight for a moment, and Snape stopped

Hermione as she turned to leave the room, his hand resting lightly on her arm. They both looked at his hand - long, pale fingers against the pristine black of her robes - and then at each other. He drew a breath, surprised again by the slight shudder in that breath.

"Let me ..." he said, then gestured with his free hand and a murmured "Accio". One of his cloaks flew to his hand; another murmur brought it down to Hermione's size and he settled it around her shoulders, fastening the black corded clasp at her neck before summoning another cloak for himself. He was acutely aware of Hermione's examination of his face throughout this, the shifting expression from confusion to tinged with hope - although the latter was perhaps wishful thinking again. Still, she had not pulled away from him, or his touch, and he had let his fingers brush the side of her jaw as he fastened the cloak. If he had nothing else, he would have this touch.

The snow was thick again now, in the depths of the Scottish winter, and they left a trail of shuffled footsteps behind them as they meandered around the school grounds. They stopped to pick herbs in the knot gardens behind the greenhouses, filling the air with the scent of the rosemary needed for medicinal potions - a task for after Christmas, but the herb would need to dry before it was used.

Somewhere in the gardens Snape had helped Hermione over a low wall; somehow, he forgot to let go of her hand once she was over. She didn't appear inclined to let it go either.

They met no-one on the walk, and heard nothing but winter - shivers of snow tumbling from trees, ice cracking and groaning on the lake - and the sound of their own voices, ringing slightly in the chill air, forming words in puffs of vapour. The talk was mostly academic, discussions of recent articles and dry sarcasm - from both - in criticism of some of the more outrageously under-researched material that had been published recently. Somewhere in the snow and the cold a decade-old rapport re-established itself quietly, rising through layers of uncertainty and dampened hope.

As dusk began to descend from the mountains ringing the school, setting the snow on fire with sun-gold, Snape and Hermione made their way back into the dungeons, to his rooms. The conversation had been enough for understanding - well, he hoped so, anyway. They were comfortable together, and it had been too long since he had felt comfort in anyone's presence - although this was not exactly comfort that he was feeling right now as they stood, dripping slightly, in front of the stove. The fire in the cast iron box had been fed recently, and the coffee pot on top of it cleaned out; the room was almost too warm after hours outside.

Snape shrugged out of his own cloak and stilled Hermione's hands as she moved to undo hers; he unfastened the cloak as carefully as he had fastened it. His hands brushed her face again; this time she leant into the touch, always watching him as she did so. He pushed the cloak off her shoulders, letting it pool to the ground behind her, and stood with his hands on her shoulders now. He couldn't quite bring himself to move, to break this spell. It wasn't real, even after all this. It couldn't quite be real.

The touch of Hermione's mouth on his proved him wrong; it was entirely real, a reality that was warm, tasting his lips - and his response was drawn from experience and fantasy, his arms drawing her in as he leant into the kiss.

Then ... then Snape was hard-pressed to recognise each individual moment as action and reaction blurred into pleasure until time slowed again and he found himself re-learning a body he'd once known as well as his own. Did this still ... oh yes, clearly it did still work. The twisted arching body beneath his own, the kiss-smoothed bite on his shoulder was proof enough of that thesis.

Did that - his experimentation came to an abrupt halt as Hermione took revenge and indulged in testing her own hypotheses; he rather thought that she was, as he had been, re-learning his body. Her old body. Somewhat more scarred, rather less changed than hers, though. Still just as ... oh, please ... capable of ...

Rational thought returned eventually, and Snape focussed on Hermione's grin. She looked inordinately pleased with herself, he thought, then found thought momentarily hard to come by again as her tongue licked briefly at lips already wet and glossed. He shook his head at his own frailty and concentrated once more on Hermione; his hands trailed from her shoulders down over her breasts - these were fuller, a little, than they had been at 18. The nipples were slightly darker than he remembered seeing in the mirror; the curves of her waist and hips a little more defined in the taut muscle there. He wondered briefly what it was that she did for exercise, then lost himself again in this exercise as he re-learnt her taste.

 **December 25th**

The clock struck twenty-five, notes filtering down the to dungeon through some trick of the castle's acoustic - or some special Christmas charm of Dumbledore's - to announce the beginning to this particular day.

Hermione lay with her eyes shut, allowing her other senses to register the feel of the man beside her, now calm, maybe even sleeping a little, after that first explosion of passion. She couldn't quite identify the point in the previous day when she had allowed herself to begin to hope; when he had asked her to go for a walk, perhaps. Or when he hadn't seemed to want her to go back to her room, even to get a coat. Or in the knot garden when their hands had clasped and not released. Or in the conversation, or in the myriad of moments when a verbal sketch was as good as a completed picture. By the time they had returned to his rooms hope had become sufficient certainty for her to stop feeling stupid that she had cast some - precautionary - charms before leaving her rooms. And sometime after that she realised that, far from forgetting, Snape had remembered every single thing in exquisite detail.

Had he changed? She wasn't certain. He was still difficult and defensive, to be sure. He had been through too many years of suspicion and double-dealing to able to abandon that. She gave the roof of the bedroom a wry smile. Not to mention that fact that if he suddenly started to behave like Peregrine Queroz, he wouldn't be Severus Snape any more; it just wouldn't be right. But the obstacles of age and status and Voldemort were no longer there. It could be that this time they had a chance.

She moved a hand fractionally to touch his hair. That was better without a doubt, but she had been too focussed on being annoyed by the man himself to notice the difference. It had taken Parvati's flirting to bring it to her attention - which would more than likely mean that Snape would return to the use of household soap as soon as humanly possible, if only to avoid any repetition of that scene.

Now she was past the uncertainties, she could see the humour in it. She stifled a sudden giggle and the movement drew an indistinct murmur from Snape. She had disturbed him, or perhaps he hadn't truly been asleep.

She placed a small kiss on his forehead.

"Merry Christmas," she said softly.

He shifted against her, making a noise of enquiry.

"I heard the clock," she explained.

He made another noise, and said something indistinct and derisive, although she did hear the words "Dumbledore" and "idiotic".

She smiled again, and wriggled down against him, so that she could plant a trail of small kisses down the line of his jaw and then up to his mouth. He turned to meet her lips, and for a moment she was lost again in the taste of him as their tongues met.

She felt one of his hands begin to stroke her hip, and she pressed forwards, bringing her leg into closer contact with him. She could feel the stirring against her, telling her that his mouth and hands weren't the only things responding. The caressing hand shifted over the muscles of her back to graze the side of her breast. She made a small sound of pleasure and yielded to the gentle pressure to roll on to her back and allow his hands and mouth free access to her.

He was quick to take advantage. He dropped a kiss in the hollow at the base of her neck and then took one of her nipples into his mouth. She arched into him as he licked and teased and suckled at her, whilst a lazy thumb drew across the tip of the other breast, sending electric shivers down her spine straight to the spot between her legs, already swollen and semi-aroused from their previous efforts. Restlessly, she moved her hips, lost in sensation, not knowing whether she was trying to heighten or release the growing pressure there. His hand moved away from her breast to stroke her belly, just above the edge of her pubic hair. She made a noise in protest as cooler air hit the naked nipple making the sensitive skin react and contract still further. His fingers were tangling in her lower hair now, teasing at the point of the triangle, dipping in and out, getting closer and closer, touching and stroking, now short, now long, now fast now slow. Her hips bucked and arched of their own volition and his mouth continued to work at her nipple. She buried her hands in his hair, pulling his head to her breast, rubbing herself against him, responding to the increasing pressure, and then his fingers found the spot and she threw back her head with a cry as her body turned to molten liquid under him.

As she came back to herself she realised that her hands were still clenched in his hair. Carefully, she released them, massaging his scalp a little as she did so.

"Did I hurt you?" she whispered.

There was a movement that could have been a shrug.

"Maybe a little. It doesn't matter."

She kissed him.

"I'm sorry."

There was a pause.

"It was worth it, though." He sounded pleased with himself. "You seemed to be enjoying it." Hermione tried not to choke.

"Smug bastard," she hissed with no real heat.

"Yes," came the calm reply. "What of it?"

She couldn't help it; she had to grin. It was just so - so _Severus_.

"Nothing," she said, and then ducked her head so that she could put her mouth on one of his nipples.

She was rewarded by a gasp and then hands burying themselves in her own hair. Gently, teasing, she lapped at him, feeling the tissue rise to prominence under her tongue. Wetting her thumb, she traced lazy circles round the other one, knowing how sensitive he was to this. She caressed him, but not for too long; if her memory served her well, he reacted quickly to this stimulation, and she had more things in mind.

Supporting herself on one elbow, as he had done earlier, she trailed her hand away from his chest, down the ribcage and to the top of his balls. Lightly she traced a pattern down the edge of his hips, and then up his inner thigh, circling, but never quite touching him. Instinctively he moved his hips to try and meet her hand, but she evaded him. He was making incoherent noises in the back of his throat somewhere between protest and plea. His hands in her hair were beginning to exert a definite pressure.

Giving in to him, she began to kiss her way down the centre of his body. Positioning herself comfortably, she began to follow the same path with her mouth that her fingers had travelled, dancing around his cock but never quite touching it. He was hard - that was clearly visible, even in the half-light of the now guttering candles - but his hands in her hair, although they were clenching, were never trying to force the direction her head.

No, he wouldn't do that. Not ever. She remembered a ten year old half-conversation about _imperio_. Enough of this, perhaps.

She moved her head sideways, to the area that he was carefully not pushing her towards, and took him into her mouth. His response was a long drawn out sound that told how much he had been wanting it. He was nearly ready, she could tell by his movements and the salty taste in the back of her throat. Carefully, she worked her way up him, licking and kissing, taking the base of his cock in her hand and cupping his balls with the other. The sounds she heard were now peppered with expletives and invocations, and then, to her surprise, the word 'no', said thickly, and his hands pushing her away.

As she lifted her head, he cupped her chin.

"Not yet," he said, voice heavy.

Dumbly, she nodded, her breath shortening at the sight of the naked desire on his face. It had been so long since anyone had looked at her with such open wanting. Not since her final year in school, to be precise. He moved to kiss her mouth, once, hard, and then moved so that he could kiss her at the top of her legs. Another movement, and he was cupping her hips and her legs parted instinctively to allow him access. Then his mouth was on her, licking and tasting, dipping inside her and moving up to circle her clitoris, sucking and nipping, and her mind ceased to be able to form any kind of coherent thought. His hands were kneading her buttocks and she brought one hand up to her own breast to mimic the movements, playing with her nipple. Her awareness focussed to a point, made up of action and reaction and something within her began to coil tighter and tighter and she knew that the point of release was near.

Some desire to have him with her this time made her put her hands on his head and move him away, hard as it was. He must have understood her inarticulate pushing and pulling, for he came onto his knees and then forward onto his elbows, to kiss her hard on the mouth. She drew her knees up and apart, to cradle him between them.

"Please, Severus, now," she whispered against his mouth.

There was a brief pressure against her and then he was inside her, rocking slowly, delicious friction against her swollen tissue. And then neither of them could stand it any longer and there was just the two of them and heat and need and rhythm and pressure and release.

Afterwards as they lay, still joined, Hermione reached to kiss Snape's shoulder. He tasted of them, sweat and stickiness, and she didn't care.

"You really are very good at this, you know," she said lazily.

There was a slight pause, long enough for her to wonder if anything was wrong.

"I have an excellent memory," he said eventually. "And you were quite right."

"I was?"

"Yes. You don't forget. Although," he added, "I have still never ridden an actual bicycle."

She laughed. She couldn't help it. She buried her head in the crook of his neck as her shoulders shook.

"Remind me to teach you." She sobered suddenly. "Severus," she said uncertainly, knowing there was one thing she had to ask, "last time we couldn't ... continue ... because of what was going on then. Is it different now?"

 _If this is all we have then so be it. But please say yes. Please._

He was silent for a very long time.

"Hermione," he said eventually. His voice was very guarded. "Circumstances have changed since you were at school but I am not significantly different."

"I came to care for the person you were at school very much," she said softly.

She could feel the rise and fall of his breathing against her.

"I cannot promise that any - relationship - with me would always be easy or pleasant. I am extremely unlikely to turn into a Professor Queroz."

He wasn't saying no, she told herself. He was thinking about it. She tried to stifle the rising hope, picking her way through the minefield of the conversation.

"If I'd wanted a Professor Queroz," she said dryly, "it seems that I could have had the real thing and I didn't notice. I may just have a thing for tall dark difficult men."

"I don't want you to have any illusions about me."

She took a chance.

"I had to dance with Hyacinth Hooch. How many illusions could I have after that?"

He sniffed.

"I had to have my legs waxed." It sounded as if the injury were fresh in his mind.

She snuffled with laughter.

"So?"

"As long as you're certain."

"I'm certain. I know this is only a beginning, but I really am certain."

He moved to kiss her again.

A long time later, after dawn was visible behind the curtains and after Christmas Day breakfast and been and gone without them, she broke away from his embrace to glare at him.

"You still haven't wished me Merry Christmas, you know."

He raised an eyebrow and then smiled.

"Merry Christmas, Hermione."

XXXXXXXXXX

 _The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,_

 _Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,_

 _Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination-_

 _We had the experience but missed the meaning,_

 _And approach to the meaning restores the experience In a different form, beyond any meaning We can assign to happiness._

 _TS Eliot - The Dry Salvages, from The Four Quartets_

 _THE END_

 _MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS_


End file.
